S-^>.§^^^<?^^$?N..^^ 




THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK 

LETTERS TO EDWARD HOOKHAM 
AND PERCY B. SHELLEY 

WITH 

Fragments of Unpublished Mss. 



EDITED BY 

RICHARD GARNETT 

FOR THE MEMBERS OF 

THE BIBLIOPHILE SOCIETY 

BOSTON: MCMX 



^ 






Copyrighted, 19J:, by 
The Bibliophile Society 

All rights reserved 



THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, MASS., U.S.A. 



€CI.A28f;(>47 



I 



THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK 



Lines on the death of Julia Hobhouse^ 
Lord Broughtons daughter 

Accept, bright Spirit, reft in lifers best bloom. 
This votive wreath to thy untimely tomb ! 
Formed to adorn all scenes and charm in all, 
The fire-side circle and the courtly hall; 
Thy friends to gladden, and thy home to bless; 
Fair form thou hadst, and grace, and graciousness. 
A mind that sought, a tongue that spoke the truth. 
And thought matured beneath the smile of youth. 
Dear, dear young friend, ingenuous, cordial heart ! 
And can it be that thou shouldst first depart ? 
That Age should sorrow d*er thy youthful shrine ? 
It owns more near, more sacred griefs than mine. 
Yet, midst the many who thy loss deplore. 
Few loved thee better, and few mourn thee more. 

— Thomas Love Peacock 



INTRODUCTION 

By Richard Garnett 

Few writers whose works have been ac- 
cepted by their own countrymen as classics 
have failed to obtain like recognition from 
critics of other nations. Especially is this 
true of British and American authors. Broad 
as it is, the Atlantic has never been a dividing 
line in separating the poets, novelists and 
historians of the two countries, whose pro- 
ductions all are merged in the one expressive 
phrase of English literature. And yet there 
have been rare exceptions. For some unex- 
plainable reason Thomas Love Peacock is 
one of these. Not that his claims have ever 
been rejected by American readers and critics, 
but that they have never been duly and 
properly presented. 

His contemporaries such as Lamb, Coleridge, 
Landor, Hazlitt, Leigh Hunt, and DeQuincey 
long ago found full recognition, but Peacock 
remains almost unknown in America save as 
the friend of Shelley. This is by no means 
surprising. No writer could be less influenced 

[3] 



by the atmosphere of the New World. There 
is but little in his writings in which an Ameri- 
can reader, as such, could be expected to take 
any particular interest. If he win his way — 
as he ought — to ultimate recognition, it will 
be by virtue of a certain affinity in his humour, 
bookish and seasoned with scholarship as it 
is, to the peculiarly delightful type of litera- 
ture, at once dry and exuberant, of which in- 
stances may be found in many American 
literary journals. Even In England recogni- 
tion Is far from Implying popularity. No his- 
torian of British literature would omit Pea- 
cock; yet In comparison with Lamb he is but 
little read. The recent appearance, neverthe- 
less, of two popular editions seems to Indicate 
progress beyond the select circles to which 
Peacock's reputation was confined In his life- 
time, and for long afterwards, though It is 
improbable that this will become widely dif- 
fused. At the same time few novelists have 
a better prospect of permanence, for there are 
few whose works depend less upon what Is 
merely temporary and accidental. 

So little Is generally known of Peacock, 
apart from his connexion with Shelley, that 
It may be desirable to furnish here an abstract 
of the leading particulars in his life. He was 
born at Weymouth, October i8, 1785. His 
father, a glass merchant, died when Thomas 

[4] 



was only three years old, and he was brought 
up at Chertsey by his mother and uncle, who 
belonged to a naval family. He received his 
education at a private school at Englefield 
Green, on the border of Windsor Forest, but 
was mainly self-taught, familiarising himself 
by a long course of reading with the best ex- 
amples of Latin, Greek, French and Italian 
literature, as well as those of his own country, 
and giving considerable attention to music 
and applied mechanics. After a short expe- 
rience in commercial life, which he found dis- 
tasteful, he declined to pursue it further, and 
retired to live with his mother, who was pos- 
sessed of but narrow means, and probably 
appeared to the world at large, as to Charles 
Clairmont, "an idly disposed kind of man." 
A secretaryship to Sir Home Popham, during 
the naval operations off the Scheldt in 1808- 
1809, was an interesting episode in his career, 
but led to nothing permanent. In 1809 his 
poem, "The Genius of the Thames," was pub- 
lished, and in the same year he paid a long 
visit to Wales which had much influence on 
the development of his genius. For some 
years he continued to write poetry of an am- 
bitious character for which he then had but 
few qualifications; but In 18 15 he conceived 
the happy idea of treating the oddities of 
Welsh society in a humorous novel, largely 

[5] 



leavened with the scholarly accumulations of 
his years of study. In the successful accom- 
plishment of this task his life work was solved, 
and the key-note of his subsequent literary 
activity struck forever. The union of learn- 
ing with exuberant humour and mordant wit 
was to a certain class of minds irresistible, 
and was fortified by the discovery of a lyrical 
vein of exquisite grace and charming melody 
of which the author had previously given few 
indications. Melincourt, less successful than 
this first venture, but containing some of 
Peacock's best prose writing in point of 
style, appeared in 1817, and Nightmare Abbey 
in 18 18. Maid Marian was nearly completed 
at the end of this year, when his unexpected 
appointment to the India House interrupted 
it, and it remained unfinished until 1822. 
Peacock was at the time residing with his 
mother at Great Marlow, where he had lived 
in close neighbourhood with Shelley for more 
than a year. Their mutual influence was in- 
considerable, but the greater genius was the 
more receptive; and the result of their inter- 
course reveals an unsuspected impression on 
Shelley from Peacock's unfinished romantic 
poem, Ahrimanes. 

It was not until 1829 that Peacock's official 
duties left him time to produce another ro- 
mance, The Misfortunes of Elphin, grounded 
[6] 



upon ancient Welsh traditions, whose humor- 
ous side is brought out most deHghtfully. 
Crotchet Castle (183 1) displays his powers at 
their zenith. A long interval follows, only 
broken by the slight attempt at fiction, — 
now for the first time published under the 
title of The Lord of the Hills, — until i860, 
when the series is closed by Gryll Grange, 
which may be fairly regarded as a brilliant 
sunset, more prolific of light than of heat. 
The effervescence of humour has subsided. 
The writer who has drawn for our enter- 
tainment so many oddities, incrusted with 
obsolete prejudice, has become an oddity him- 
self. But the style has the old classic finish, 
and the outlook on the world at large is more 
spacious and genial. What more can be said 
of any book than that it has been found an 
antidote to sea-sickness? Fanny Kemble 
writes to William Bodham Donne, after a 
voyage across the Atlantic: "How many 
thanks I owe you for that delightful book, 
Gryll Grange — it is almost a poem, and so 
full of pleasant fancy and smart imagination 
— it cheered and charmed my sea-sorrow and 
I blessed you for it all the time I read." 

Peacock's ofiicial career was highly honour- 
able to him. He received his appointment in 
the East India Company's home service by 
the interest, it is said, of the Company's 

[7] 



secretary and historian, Peter Auber, a dis- 
tant relative. The necessity for a better 
quality of official reports and despatches had 
become apparent, and Peacock was one of 
four new "assistant examiners" appointed 
from the outside for this purpose. The most 
distinguished of his colleagues was James 
Mill, philosopher, economist and historian of 
British India, father of John Stuart Mill, 
Peacock's successor as Chief Examiner, upon 
the latter's retirement in 1856. Peacock had 
held this high post since 1836; his official re- 
ports and despatches slumber in the India 
office, but his efficiency is attested by his 
published evidence before various Parliamen- 
tary Committees, especially those on the salt 
duties and on the alleged grievance of Mr. 
Silk Buckingham. He had specialties of his 
own, among them the exploration of the 
Euphrates and the promotion of steam navi- 
gation to India. His taste for naval architec- 
ture, inherited from his mother's family, and 
his practical knowledge of machinery, en- 
abled him to design steamers for the East 
India Company which did good service in 
the first Chinese War. After his retirement 
he resided entirely at Lower Halliford, near 
Chertsey, where he had long had a country 
house, and where he died on January 23, 
1866, in his eighty-first year. 
[8] 



His literary remains, here printed for the 
first time, are selections from a mass of mis- 
cellaneous papers which the editor has re- 
cently had the opportunity of examining 
in company with Peacock's grand-daughter, 
Mrs. Clarke, who nearly forty years ago 
published the first collected edition of his 
works in conjunction with Sir Henry Cole. 
Most of these papers (such as presented any 
literary interest) were purchased by the 
British Museum, where they are now gener- 
ally accessible. They comprise Ahrimanes, 
the fragmentary novels, with the exception of 
the unnamed romance — the manuscript of 
which is in the editor's possession — and the 
correspondence with Hookham and Lord 
Broughton. The letters to Shelley are in the 
Bodleian Library, along with other papers 
long withheld from public inspection. A few 
copies were privately printed many years 
ago. A very few copies of Peacock's little 
diary of i8i8 were also privately printed by 
Mrs. Clarke. 

THE LETTERS 

Peacock's correspondence, so far as avail- 
able, falls into two main divisions. i. — 
Letters to his friend and publisher, Edward 
Hookham, 1807-1811. 2. — Letters to Percy 
[9] 



Bysshe Shelley during the latter's residence 
in Italy, 1818-1822. 

Edward Hookham, with his brother Thomas, 
combined the callings of bookseller, publisher, 
and circulating library-keeper at 15, Old Bond 
Street. Thomas, occasionally referred to by 
acquaintances as "the little man," would 
seem to have been the senior partner, and 
must have been on intimate terms with Pea- 
cock; but the especial companionship was 
with Edward, of whom, apart from these 
letters, hardly any trace remains. The origin 
of their friendship is not known; it may have 
originated in a community of sentiment, for 
Peacock was at this time theoretically a 
liberal, and so were the Hookhams. 

In August, 1807, the date of the first letter 
to Hookham extant, the relation of author 
and publisher seems to have been most ami- 
cable. The Hookhams, who had already 
brought out Peacock's Palmyra in the pre- 
vious year, are willing to publish a poem, 
evidently of considerable length, which he is 
proposing to write, and to supply him with 
books, which latter office they are found dis- 
charging throughout the remainder of the 
correspondence. These books, it is probable, 
were not purchases on his account, but simply 
loans from the library; which must have 
been much better provided with standard 

[10] 



works, In various languages, than would be 
the case with a London circulating library at 
the present time. The meditated poem was 
probably The Genius of the Thames, the MS. 
of which was sent to the publisher in March, 
1809, while the author, on shipboard off 
Flushing, was acting in the capacity of sec- 
retary to Admiral Popham, amid uncon- 
genial surroundings, which must have long 
prevented him from giving much attention to 
his poem. The piece, indeed, must have re- 
quired thorough reconstruction, since we 
find the author, escaped to terra firma, busy 
with additions and alterations up to the 
August following; and it is still at press, and 
still in need of a prooemium in January, 18 10, 
when the author has betaken himself to North 
Wales to give it its finishing touches. It is 
finally annoiinced as ready for publication in 
February; and Peacock is soon afterwards 
having his books and wardrobe (as well as 
numerous other books furnished by the ac- 
commodating Hookham), forwarded to him 
in his Merionethshire retreat, which he had 
not quitted up to August, 18 10. The gap be- 
tween this date and April, 181 1, suggests that 
he may have returned to London in the in- 
terval. If so, he probably carried off "the 
library and wardrobe," for in the next letter, 
April 9, 181 1, he is found about to bid a long 
[II] 



farewell to Merionethshire, and apparently- 
unencumbered with anything but "a clean 
shirt," and Luarch and Tacitus. This enter- 
taining and most characteristic letter is the 
last preserved, but as it was purchased by the 
present editor from an autograph dealer, it is 
probable that others exist in the possession of 
private collectors. It has once been printed, 
but is added here to complete the series. 

The Hookhams continued to be Peacock's 
publishers until, in 1837, four of his novels 
were transferred to Bentley for inclusion in 
the Standard Novel Series. The Hookham 
brothers had been the means of introducing 
Peacock to Shelley, who had made acquaint- 
ance with them by offering to them for pub- 
lication his Letter to Lord Ellenhorough on the 
Prosecution of D. I. Eaton, and to whom in 
August, 1812, they sent their second edition 
of The Genius of the Thames, — which in- 
cluded a republication of Palmyra, — and 
also Peacock's new poetical essay The Philoso- 
phy of Melancholy. Shelley in a letter dated 
August 18, 18 1 2, expresses high admiration 
of The Genius of the Thames as poetry, but 
censures Peacock for wildly deeming "that 
commerce is prosperity, and that the glory of 
the British flag is the happiness of the British 
people." Not having had the advantage of 
reading Peacock's letters to Hookham he 
[12] 



could not be acquainted with Peacock's pri- 
vate opinions on "the rapacity of commerce," 
or the intention he had at one time entertained 
of introducing Carthage into his poem as an 
episode for the admonition of England. The 
personal introduction was also no doubt 
effected through the Hookhams. "I saw 
Shelley for the first time," says Peacock, "in 
1812, just before he went to Tanyrallt." This 
must mean before he went to Tanyrallt from 
London, since he had originally proceeded 
thither from Lynmouth; and the date would 
be early in November, 18 12. 

The date of Edward Hookham's death is 
not known. His brother was living as late as 
i860, when he gave Sir Percy and Lady 
Shelley information connected with Shelley's 
history. 

If Peacock had possessed no other claim to 
distinction, he might have shared it as the 
recipient of some of the most beautiful de- 
scriptive letters ever written; namely, those 
of Shelley written from Switzerland and 
Italy. From Italy alone there were thirty, of 
which the thirteen published by Mrs. Shelley, 
and one at least of the seventeen subse- 
quently printed by Peacock himself, entirely 
merit that high character. It seems at first 
a serious imputation upon Peacock that no 
more than fourteen replies from him should 

[13] 



be producible; but his share of the corre- 
spondence was certainly much larger. There 
is internal evidence both in his letters and in 
Shelley's of the despatch and receipt of letters 
which cannot now be found; for Shelley's fre- 
quent changes of residence in Italy undoubt- 
edly occasioned the loss of many letters. "I 
did my best," says Peacock, "to satisfy his 
curiosity on this subject [Peacock's appoint- 
ment at the India House]; but it was in 
letters to Naples which he had left before they 
arrived, and he never received them. I ob- 
served that this was the case with letters 
which arrived at any town in Italy after he 
had left it." 

It is always agreeable to see the reverse 
side of the medal. Peacock's letters,^ though 
of less importance on account of the writer 
than of the addressee, make, so far as they go, 
a good practical counterpart to Shelley's, and 
must have been valuable to the poet as keep- 
ing him in touch with affairs in England. 
They would have been more Interesting if 
Peacock had been a member of the literary 
circle of Leigh Hunt and Keats; but his 
choice, on coming to London, of a residence in 
Stanford Street, Blackfriars, interposed an al- 

* Two are omitted as insignificant, and some re- 
trenchments of uninteresting matter have been made 
from others. — R. G. 

[14] 



most insurmountable barrier of remoteness 
between him and the Hampstead colony. It 
is curious, though perhaps hardly wonderful, 
that there should not be the faintest evidence 
of acquaintance between him and Charles 
Lamb, though they worked together in Lead- 
enhall Street for years, — Peacock certainly ' 
in much the higher and more responsible 
capacity. 

Letters to Edward T. Hookham 

Cherts EY, August 3rd, 1807. 

My dear Sir, — I know not how to thank 
you sufficiently for your numerous favours; 
but I shall avail myself of your generous 
offer, and put my little vessel again on the 
stocks. I fear you will find me rather trouble- 
some in the course of my undertaking; at 
present I have only to require Volney's Voy- 
age en Syrie (No. 17469), and Montesquieu 
sur la Grandeur et Decadence des Romains 
(No. 1 62 1 8). I have some thought of arrang- 
ing the poem in four divisions, but of this 
hereafter. Perhaps I have undertaken more 
than I can perform, and shall be obliged at 
last to leave the work unfinished. However, 
as I have no better occupation, I will return 
to the idle trade of writing verses. I am 
writing in a great hurry, and after dinner, — 

[15] 



a time at which I am not very fond of flourish- 
ing the goosequill. Brevity, as Polonius says, is 
the soul of wit, but I apprehend, in the present 
instance it is the soul without a body. 
Yours sincerely, 

T. L. Peacock. 
Mr. E. T. HooKHAM, 

15 Old Bond St., London. 

H. M. S. Venerable, in the Downs, 

November 28, 1808. 

My dear Edward, — I have this day re- 
ceived your budget of modern literature, 
which has been lying for two or three days at 
the Three Kings, owing to the negligence of 
those whom I desired to call for it. As soon 
as I have finished this letter, which will prob- 
ably be rather brief, — brevity being, as I 
have before observed to you on the authority 
of Shakespear, the soul of wit, — I shall begin 
to gratify my romantic appetite with Lewis's 
Romantic Tales. The fourth volume, by the 
way, of that work I have discovered to be 
non est inventus. This is a proper Irishism. 
To call not finding a thing making a discovery 
places me on the list with Mr. Robson, who 
heard a profound silence, and with Bottom the 
weaver, who spied a voice. I thank you for 
your kind attention, and rejoice to find that 
my fears were groundless. 
[i6] 



How must you have enjoyed your excursion 
to Scotland! I presume, from what you say, 
Miss Mills was one of your party. She must 
have been, if I may be allowed to judge from 
the little I know of her, a very pleasing com- 
panion in such an expedition. You went over 
the same ground on which I wandered alone 
in the spring of 1806. You visited Dalkeith. 
Is not the Esk a most delightful stream? Did 
you see that enchanting spot where the North 
and South Esk unite? Did you think of the 
lines of Sir Walter Scott — 

His wandering feet his native seat 

'Mid Esk's fair woods regain, 
Through banks more fair no stream more sweet 

Rolls to the Eastern main. 
Sweet are the paths — oh passing sweet 

By Esk's fair stream that run 
O'er winding steep — through copse wood deep. 

Impervious to the sun. 
Who knows not Melville's beechy grove 

And Rosslyn's ancient glen, 
Dalkeith, which all the virtues love 

And classic Hawthornden? 

Did you visit the banks of the sweet silver 
Teviot, and that most lovely of rivers, the un- 
describably fascinating Tweed? Did you sit 
by moonlight in the ruins of Melrose? Did 
you stand by twilight on that romantic wood 
which overhangs the Teviot on the side of 
Roxburgh Castle? 

[17] 



As to writing poetry, or doing anything 
else that is rational in this floating Inferno, it 
is almost next to a moral impossibility. I 
would give the world now to be at home, and 
devote the whole winter to the composition of 
a comedy. I am most assuredly completely 
out of my element here. Why then do I 
stay? To please some of my friends who ad- 
vise me to do so because there is a prospect of 
its conducing to advantage. England is the 
modern Carthage; the love of gold, the last 
corruption of man, pervades the whole state 
from the centre to the extremities. If any 
one be placed in a situation attended with im- 
mediate or consequent profit, it is sufficient 
for the multitude to pronounce him well em- 
ployed, and to raise a most vehement outcry 
against all who dare to dissent from them. It 
would be ridiculous to talk to them of degra- 
dation of mind — contamination of morals. 

Kindest remembrances to Tom. Tell him 
I hope to hear from him shortly. Write to 
me as soon as possible. 

Yours most sincerely, 

T. L. Peacock. 

H. M. S. Venerable, The Downs, 
February lo, 1809. 

My dear Edward, — I return with many 
thanks the whole of your first cargo of books, 

[18] 



excepting the comedy of Management. I 
came on board on Sunday, since which it has 
blown a constant gale, except during a short 
period on Tuesday, so that I could not send 
off this box before. I know not whether our 
bum boat will be off today, which is the best 
opportunity I have of transacting any little 
business of this nature. Have the goodness 
to send me the fourth volume of Lewis's Ro- 
mantic Tales, The Romance of the Forest, The 
Ring and the Well, Adelmora the Outlaw, and 
something very elegantly romantesque in the 
poetical department, if you can find anything 
of that description which I have not yet seen. 
I have never read the Minstrelsy of the Scottish 
Border; if you can spare it conveniently, you 
may send me that likewise. Send them in a 
paper parcel; should they be too many to 
pack up well in paper, omit The Romance of 
the Forest. 

What new in the republic of letters? Is 
another volume of Miss Baillie's tragedies 
forthcoming? Has GIfford undertaken to 
edit Beaumont and Fletcher? Or is any new 
edition of these dramatists in contemplation? 
What is Walter Scott about? Is anything 
new escaped from the pen of the incomparable 
Southey? How is poor Campbell? His lyre 
breathed the very soul of poetry; must it 
remain unstrung for ever? Is Wordsworth 

[19] 



sleeping in peace on his bed of mud in the 
profundity of the Bathos, or will he ever 
again wake to dole out a lyrical ballad? His 
last work to all appearance has damned him 
irrecoverably. Is there any new romance by 
the author of The Fatal Revenge ? What tours 
and travels are at present most in vogue? 
How is Sir John Carr getting on? What was 
the last act of folly, in the shape of publica- 
tion, committed by Mr. Pratt, or Dr. Mavor, 
or Miss Seward, or Mr. Hayley, or any other 
of Mr. Phillips's formidable host of inanity? 
Can you tell me anything concerning Jacky 
Morfitt, the Latinist of Birmingham? You 
sometime since mentioned a poem by a Sepoy, 
which Leyden was translating; what expecta- 
tions may I entertain on that head? Are 
Knight and Price still at issue respecting the 
distinct character of the picturesque and the 
beautiful? Has anything on that subject 
made its appearance lately? Now, answer 
every one of these questions categorically, or 
to the best of your information, which I have 
no doubt is sufficiently extensive. 
Yours most sincerely, 

T. L. Peacock. 

Apropos, if you have Forsyth's Elements of 
Moral Science, send that too. 

I once asked you if Miss Cornelia Knight 

[20] 



were the sister of Richard Payne Knight, Esq. 
You replied, you could not tell, having never 
heard of her. The lady is the authoress of 
Latium, or La Campagna di Roma, &c, &c, 
&c. The gentleman is sufficiently known to 
you by his analytical enquiry into the princi- 
ples of Taste. Find out if you can, as I par- 
ticularly wish to know. 

H. M. S. Venerable, Downs, 
March 13, 1809. 

My dear Edward, — I should sooner have 
thanked you and your brother for your very 
kind and acceptable letter, and your last 
packet of literature; but I have been very 
busy with Forsyth's Moral Science, and my 
own little poem of The Thames, which I have 
just finished, and now send to you, such as it 
is. I have a number of miscellaneous pieces 
by me, sufficient, with a classical ballad or 
two now in embryo, to make a volume 
the size of Palmyra. Perhaps it might be 
better to publish The Thames alone in 
quarto. 

I sympathise with you most deeply in the 
doleful description you give of your melan- 
choly pilgrimage through Carr's Scottish Tour. 
Heaven preserve us! Sir John Carr on the 
banks of the Tw-eed! As wise and as observ- 
ing as an owl in sunshine! Sir John Carr on 

[21] 



classical ground! Sir John in Teviotdale! In 
the scenes immortalised by Scott and Leyden! 
attempting to hold his farthing candle to the 
sun, and to meddle with things which he has 
neither a heart to feel nor a mind to compre- 
hend! Rosslyn and Richmond Hill! The 
Frith of Forth and the Paddington Canal 
will be the next objects of comparison. What 
adequate punishment can be devised for the 
inconceivable folly of this incorrigible cham- 
pion of dullness? this daring trespasser on 
the territories of the lite-rary republic? this 
ignorant intruder on the regions of the pic- 
turesque? this itinerant Vandal? this eternal 
gatherer of nosegays of weeds? You say he 
went to Bridewell; would to Heaven he had 
remained there! 

I fear you have been considerable losers by 
the downfall of Drury Lane Theatre; pray 
let me know. 

I send you the only copy of The Thames I 
have. You will particularly oblige me by 
writing as soon as it comes to hand, and 
communicating your ideas on the subject. 
Yours most sincerely, 

T. L. Peacock. 

It has just occurred to me that I have been 
guilty of a horrible piece of vandalism in 
omitting to mention, in the accompanying 

[22] 



poem, Runnymead and Cowper's Hill. This 
palpable deficiency must be filled up. You 
will see the proper place for introducing them 
at page 26. 

Since writing the above postscript I have 
supplied the defect In a manner. One or two 
corrections are necessary throughout the poem 
with regard to the recurrence of epithets, and 
the addition of a few notes appears indis- 
pensably requisite. 



Ramsgate, April 3, 1809. 

My dear Edward, — I shall be in London 
In a day or two. I have sent a trunk and two 
boxes to your care, which if you will have the 
goodness to take in, and pay the carriage, 
you will particularly oblige me. I walked 
hither today from Deal, and have cast an- 
chor for the evening. Tomorrow I shall walk 
round the North Foreland to Margate; from 
thence I shall proceed to Canterbury, and, 
after devoting an hour or two to the cathedral 
and Thomas a Becket, commit my valuable 
carcass to the first leathern bucket I can find 
bound to London. 

This morning between Deal and Sandwich, 
in a solitary situation, my attention was 
attracted by a stone, with the following 
inscription: — 

[23] 



On this spot, 

August 25TH, 1782, 

MARY BAX; SPINSTER 

Aged 23 years, 

was murdered by 

Martin Lash, a foreigner, 

Who WAS executed for 

the crime. 

I thought immediately of Southey's ballad of 
the "Cross Roads," and remembered what 
the soldier in that ballad says of the post 
against which he is represented to be leaning. 
Kindest remembrances to Tom. 

Ever yours, T. L. Peacock. 

Chertsey, May 17, 1809. 

My dear Edward, — I am told Tom 
Warton wrote a poem on the Thames. I sup- 
pose you have his works; if so, I will thank 
you to send them me. I have fixed on the 
Monday week after next for tracing the river 
from its source, though I shall have finished 
the first part before that time, which will then 
consist of more than 700 lines. If I can 
make the second as long, the "Genius of the 
Thames" will be sufficiently extensive. I 
have not at present materials for such an 
enlargement; I hope my expedition will fur- 
nish them. You will pass Sunday with me at 
the Wheatsheaf, and early on Monday morn- 
[24] 



ing, when you set off for London, I shall walk 
over to Slough, and mount the rostrum of 
one of the Gloucestershire coaches. What 
think you of this scheme? The course of the 
river, from Trensbury Mead to Chertsey is 
i8o miles, a very decent walk. 

I hope the gaiety and dissipation of London 
has not effaced the impressions produced by 
Virginia Water. Let me just recall to your 
mind the King's plantation, the cultivated 
corner by the chevaux de frise gates. Chapel 
Wood, the seat under the oak, the old fisher- 
man's punt, the magnificent beech, the £12000 
bridge, the Belvidere, the laurel walk, the 
iron gate under the arch, my favourite pine 
grove on the bank of the water, the cascade, 
&c, &c, &c. Kindest remembrances to Tom. 
Ever yours, T. L. Peacock. 

Cricklade, June 2nd, 1809. 

My dear Edward, — This place I find is 
in Wiltshire; my ignorance! After I wrote to 
you on Tuesday from Farringdon, I walked 
on to Shrivenham, six miles further, where I 
cast anchor for the night, and indeed, as it 
turned out, for the whole of the following 
day; an incessant rain compelling me to con- 
tinue where I was. Yesterday being fine, I 
walked hither, and being within five miles of 
the source of the Thames, anticipated the 

[25] 



pleasure of seeing It today; but my usual 
bad luck attends me, In the shape of a per- 
fect tempest of wind and rain, without the 
smallest chance of its abating. Before I left 
Shrlvenham, I took an examination of Beckett 
Lees, the seat of the late Lord Barrlngton. 
The grounds are very extensive, and, though 
laid out In the modern taste, very beautiful 
In their kind, but greatly Injured by neglect. 
There is an Immense number of elms, the 
finest I have ever seen. Shrlvenham is a 
pretty village; the church is good, and con- 
tains a marble monument to Admiral Bar- 
rlngton, consisting of a flag, sword and 
cushion, exquisitely sculptured. There are 
likewise the monuments of Lord and Lady 
Barrlngton and their children. But the uni- 
versal good character of that noble family, 
and the Indelible regret of all the surround- 
ing villages and peasantry, form a more 
noble record than the marble monuments. 
The estates have passed into the possession of 
a bishop; the favourite walks of the old lord 
are overgrown with weeds, and in some places 
destroyed. 

Between Shrlvenham and HIghworth, I 
observed a mill very picturesquely situated. 
HIghworth church Is a fine object, apparently 
very ancient. 

Cricklade is the shabbiest place in Eng- 

[26] 



land. The church tower Is fine, and the in- 
terior workmanship admirable. The church 
wardens have beautified it with whitewash; 
miscreants! Several streams unite here; the 
natives are not agreed which is the Thames; 
they are the most perfect set of vandals I ever 
met with. In their vulgar ideas, the canal is 
the most interesting object. I hoped to be 
able to extract something from the parson, but 
I find he is just married, so that all he had in 
him has most probably been extracted already; 
besides, who could think of interrupting a 
honeymoon.'* I slept last night in a nice airy 
room, with plenty of apertures on all sides 
for the admission of fresh air. 

N. B. Blew a hurricane. 

I have just received your very laconic 
epistle, by which I see the spirit of grave- 
digging still keeps fast hold of you. Perhaps 
on Sunday you may have half an hour to 
spare; if so, you may inform me what is go- 
ing forward in the civilized world. The neces- 
sary address I will give you in my next. There 
will be no harm, if you find yourself at leisure, 
in getting a little written beforehand. To 
find a letter from a friend in a strange place is 
something like meeting a friend In a foreign 
country; note this, and favour me If possible. 
Ever yours, T. L. Peacock. 

[27] 



Oxford, June 6th, 1809. 

My dear Edward, — Having given you 
the space of twenty-four hours to contem- 
plate me in an attitude of profound medita- 
tion over the source of the Thames, I resume 
the thread of my narration. Thames Head is 
a flat spring, in a field about a mile from Tarl- 
ton, lying close to the bank of the Thames and 
Severn Canal. This spring in the summer 
months is totally dry. None of our pic- 
turesque-hunters appear to have asked them- 
selves the question: How is it possible that 
a river which is perpetually flowing can rise 
from a source which is sometimes dry? The 
infant river at Kemble Meadows is never 
totally dry, and to this source, by which the 
stream there is constantly supplied, can alone 
belong the honour of giving birth to the 
Thames. But this spring, Thames Head, 
would never be totally dry, were it not for 
a monstrous piece of machinery erected near 
for the purpose of throwing up Its water into 
the neighbouring canal. The Thames is al- 
most as good a subject for a satire as a pane- 
gyric. A satirist might exclaim: The rapacity 
of Commerce, not content with the immense 
advantages derived from this river in a course 
of nearly 300 miles, erects a ponderous engine 
over the very place of its nativity, to suck up 

[28] 



its unborn waters from the bosom of the earth 
and pump them into a navigable canal! It 
were to be wished, after all, that the crime of 
water-sucking were the worst that could be 
laid to the charge of commercial navigation; 
but we have only to advert to the conduct of 
the Spanish Christians in South America, of 
the English Christians in the East Indies, and 
of the Christians of all nations on the coast 
of Africa, to discover the deeper dye of its 
bloodsucking atrocities. 

A panegyrist, on the contrary, after ex- 
patiating on the benefits of commercial nav- 
igation, and of the great effort of human 
Ingenuity, the Thames and Severn Canal, 
which ascends the hills, sinks into the valleys, 
and penetrates the bowels of the earth, to 
unite the two noblest rivers of this most 
wealthy, prosperous, happy, generous, loyal, 
patriotic, &c, &c, &c, kingdom of England, 
might say: "And yet this splendid under- 
taking would be incomplete, through the 
failure of water in the summer months, did 
not this noble river, this beautiful emblem 
and powerful Instrument of the commercial 
greatness of Britain, contribute to that 
greatness, even at the instant of its birth, 
by supplying this magnificent charm of 
connection with the means of perpetual 
utility!" 

[29] 



I must again break off for the present, 
and will send you this letter, if possible, 
tomorrow. 

Invariably yours, T. L. Peacock. 

Chertsey, September 5th, 1809. 

I have to thank you for two letters, and 
Godwin's "Political Justice." Your letter of 
Saturday, breathing hell and the devil, I read 
with that compassion which is due to a soul 
in pain. When do you propose to leave off 
knocking about the skulls and bones, in order 
to get knocked about yourself by the waves of 
old Neptune, getting your hair filled every 
morning with salt and sand, for the sake of 
passing all the rest of the day in a fruitless 
attempt to make it either dry or clean.? 

The Genius of the Thames is in a state of 
progression. I have thought of various sub- 
jects for an episode, but cannot hit on any- 
thing to suit my fancy, unless, in my reflec- 
tions on the mutability of empire, I were to 
introduce one on the fall of Carthage. I 
think this subject highly susceptible of poet- 
ical ornament. I Intend, however, to finish 
the poem without any episode, leaving the 
second part shorter than the first, and with 
a place in which an episode may or may not 
be Inserted. Is there not another number of 
the "Graphic Illustrations"? You say noth- 

[30] 



ing of N. W. — what are your intentions on 
that subject? Adieu! 

Thos. L. Peacock. 

Chertsey, September 19, 1809. 

I perceive by the newspaper direction that 
you are still in Bond St. I do not suppose 
you can have been to Brighton and returned 
from thence, already. Let me know what are 
your intentions, and whether you are likely to 
remain long at home, as I hope in a few days 
to send you the second part. I have not in- 
troduced an episode. I think the poem, as a 
whole, will be much better without one. Will 
you favour me with Kirwan's "Metaphysical 
Essays" — Madame Cottin's "Mathilde," in 
French, — " Cook on Forest Trees " — " Park's 
Travels in Africa" (No. 3349); the "Remains 
of H. K. White," Knight's "Progress of Civil 
Society," and that volume of Hume which 
contains the reign of Elizabeth? I want 
several of these for the purpose of manufac- 
turing notes. Wright's "Horae lonicae" is 
highly praised in the Critical Review. I 
should like to read it, if in the library. I am 
now reading Locke and [Jacob] Bryant. I 
recommend you by all means to read the 
former, before all other speculative books: 
the "Essay on Human Understanding" is 
the very best foundation of an enlightened 

[31] 



system of study. You may observe that 
most modern philosophical writers suppose 
the reader to be acquainted with Locke. 
Adieu! In a few days I shall send you the 
second part, but let me hear from you first. 

T. L. Peacock. 

Maentwrog, Merionethshire, 
January 20, 1810. 

I have received your second Lacedemonian 
despatch, enclosing a sheet from Bentley, 
which, however, does not require to be re- 
turned. It was a clean sheet, not a proof. If 
you have written since that time, the letters 
must be at Tre-Madoc, which I left on Thurs- 
day. I shall request Mr. Madocks's attorney, 
who resides in this place, and goes thither 
every week, to make enquiry at the post 
office. 

Maentwrog (pronounced Maentoorog) is 
eight miles from Tre-Madoc. I have taken a 
lodging here pro tempore, while I look about 
the country for something less expensive. I 
shall remain where I am, till I have quite 
done with the Thames. I have delayed writ- 
ing till the last moment, in the hope of being 
able to send the Procemium, but that I must 
defer till Tuesday. 

This is a delightful spot, enchanting even 
in the gloom of winter; in summer it must be 

[32] 



a terrestrial paradise. It is a beautiful narrow 
vale, several miles in length, extending in 
one direction to the sea, and totally em- 
bosomed in mountains, the sides of which are 
covered, in many parts, with large woods of 
oaks. My sitting-room has a bow window, 
looking out on a lovely river, which flows 
through the vale. In the vicinity are many 
deep glens, along which copious mountain 
streams, of inconceivable clearness, roar over 
rocky channels — and numerous waterfalls of 
- the most romantic character. 

There is no other lodging of any descrip- 
tion to be obtained in this part of the world 
but that in which I now am, and which suits 
me admirably in all respects but one. If I 
could induce mine host to moderate his de- 
mands a little, I should feel perfectly happy 
in casting anchor here. I am in a detached 
house, called The Lodge; there are not above 
seven houses in the place. The post office is 
at Tan-y-Bwlch, a solitary inn just by, at 
which a picturesque tourist lately made a 
pause of five months, being unable to tear 
himself from so fascinating a scene. This 
piece of information I received from Mr. 
Madocks. Maentwrog, small as it is, contains 
a lawyer, doctor, and parson. The latter is a 
little dumpy, drunken, mountain goat. 

Pray write me a long letter in the course 

[33] 



of a day or two. I do not like to send for 
my books till I am settled in a permanent 
residence. 

T. L. Peacock. 

Maentwrog Lodge, Feb. 26, 1810. 

I should have written several days ago, but 
I have been expecting by every post a letter 
from Auber, whom I requested to enquire of 
the E. I. H. librarian the title of the best his- 
tory of Persia, which is almost the very first 
work I ought to read. I suppose he has not 
had an opportunity of asking the question, 
but as I do not like to lose time, I shall be 
obliged to you to get me the best History of 
Persia you can discover. 

I presume the "Genius of the Thames" Is 
now ready for publication. At what price do 
you mean to publish it? Of course not more 
than that of "Palmyra." You will oblige me 
by sending twelve copies to William St. Croix, 
by the Hornerton coach; six to my mother, 
and six to me. Have the goodness likewise 
to send my mother Sturm's "Reflections." 

My packages I suppose are now jumbling 
in the Shrewsbury waggon; as my mother in- 
formed me she should send them to London 
on the 19th. I half expected a letter from 
you, notifying their departure. 

Mr. Tonnereaux's snuff-box puzzles me 

[34] 



completely, as the Romans were not in the 
habit of regaling their noses with "pungent 
grains of titillating dust." If he uses these 
artificial stimuli, like some of my philosophical 
friends, to lighten the labours of the midnight 
lamp, perhaps Horace's laborum duke lenimen 
may suit him. But when my classics arrive, 
I shall investigate the abstruse subject with 
due profundity, and perhaps may have suffi- 
cient sagacity to smell out something apropos. 

I wish I could find language sufficiently 
powerful to convey to you an Idea of the 
sublime magnificence of the waterfalls in 
the frost — when the old overhanging oaks 
are spangled with icicles, the rocks sheeted 
with frozen foam, formed by the flying spray, 
and the water, that oozes from their sides, 
congealed into innumerable pillars of crystal. 
Every season has its charms. The picturesque 
tourists, these birds of summer, see not half 
the beauties of Nature. 

I look forward with anxious satisfaction to 
the close of the opera season, when you and I 
may crack an egg together here — a more 
philosophical operation than cracking a bottle. 

T. L. Peacock. 

Maentwrog Lodge, March 22, 18 10. 
I sit down with a resolution to write a very 
long letter, so put on your nightcap and com- 

[35] 



pose yourself at full length on the sofa. When 
your letter arrived last week, announcing the 
departure of my library and wardrobe, I re- 
solved to devote the whole interval to explor- 
ing the vicinity, and have been climbing about 
the rocks and mountains, by the rivers and 
the sea, with indefatigable zeal, carrying in 
my mind the bardic Triad, that " a poet should 
have an eye that can see Nature, a heart that 
can feel Nature, and resolution that dares 
follow Nature;" in obedience to which latter 
injunction I have nearly broken my neck. 
Now were I to attempt a description of all I 
have seen, and felt, and followed, I might 
fill seven sheets of foolscap, and still leave 
the cream of the tale unskimmed. I shall 
therefore content myself with promising, when 
you come here in August (which may no evil 
genius prohibit!), to show you scenes of such 
exquisite beauty and of such overpowering 
sublimity, as, once beheld, can never be 
forgotten. 

The other day I prevailed on my new ac- 
quaintance. Dr. Gryffyth, to accompany me 
at midnight to the Black Cataract, a favourite 
haunt of mine, about two and one-half miles 
from here. Mr. Lloyd, whom I believe I have 
mentioned to you more than once, volunteered 
to be of the party; and at twenty minutes 
past eleven, lighted by the full moon, we sallied 

[36] 



forth, to the no small astonishment of mine 
host, who protested he never expected to see 
us all again. The effect was truly magnifi- 
cent; the water descends from a mountainous 
glen down a winding rock, and then precipi- 
tates itself, in a sheet of foam, over its black 
base, into a capacious basin^ the sides of which 
are all but perpendicular, and covered with 
hanging oak and hazel. Evans in the "Cam- 
brian Itinerary," describes it as an abode of 
damp and horror, and adds that the whole 
cataract cannot be seen in one view, as the 
sides are too steep and slippery to admit of 
climbing up, and the tip of the upper fall is 
invisible from below. Mr. Evans seems to 
have laboured under a small degree of alarm, 
which prevented accurate investigation, for 
I have repeatedly climbed this unattemptable 
rock, and obtained this impossible view; as 
he or anyone else might do with very little 
difficulty, though Dr. Gryffyth, the other 
night, trusting to a rotten branch, had a fall 
of fifteen feet perpendicular, and but for an 
intervening hazel, would infallibly have been 
hurled to the bottom. But a similar mistake 
is not likely to occur in daylight. Let me ad- 
vise you, while I think of it, to provide your- 
self for your journey with nails in the heels of 
your shoes, which may save you from the mis- 
adventures of the jolly miller who lived on 

[37] 



the river Dee, who, according to the old song, 
had a bump upon his rump. 

I make due allowance for the brevity of 
your epistles, in consideration that this is the 
depth of the London winter, and the Tramez- 
zani and Catalani must fill the King's Theatre 
on every night of performance, and that you 
are consequently knocking about the bones 
& skulls most furiously; but when you can 
find time to peep out of your grave, I shall be 
glad to know when "The Genius of the 
Thames" will be published, and when I may 
expect Kirwan, Berkley, Spence, &c. I just 
mention these, from an apprehension that 
your attention to my last list may induce you 
to forget the first, which consisted of these and 
of the Critical and Edinburgh Reviews, Dec, 
Jan., Feb., March; Massinger, and the mathe- 
matical instruments. Euclid would be a neces- 
sary accompaniment to the latter, and if you 
have not disposed of Ireland's "Wye and 
Medway," I shall now be glad to have them. 
I should be much pleased if you could make 
it convenient to send me a small box, or 
parcel, punctually every month, with the Crit- 
ical Review, Graphic Illustrations, and what 
others you think proper; a certain regular 
literary novelty of this description is a thing 
to which I look forward with inconceivable 
satisfaction — it is one of my hobby-horses. 

[38] 



There Is more truth than poetry in the remark 
of Wordsworth that "as high as we have 
mounted in delight, In our dejection do we 
sink as low." You saw this exemplified In me 
last summer when I was sometimes skipping 
about the room, singing, and playing all sorts 
of ridiculous antics, at another doling out 
staves of sorrow, and meditating a dagger 
and laurel water. Such is the dispositions of 
all votaries of the Muses, and, in some manner, 
of all metaphysicians; for the sensitive and 
the studious are generally prone to melan- 
choly, and the melancholy are usually subject 
to intervals of boisterous mirth. Poor Cowper 
was a lamentable Instance, and Tasso, and 
Collins, and Chatterton — a list that might 
be prolonged almost ad infinitum. I do not 
mean to say that the effects of this morbid 
disposition are always so fatally exemplified 
as In the four I have mentioned, of whom 
three were driven to Insanity, and one to 
suicide. Cratlnus, Democrltus, Horace, and 
others, have opined that a certain degree 
of non-composity Is essential to the poetic 
character, and I am Inclined to think 
that there is considerable justice In the 
observation. 

Oblige me by sending a copy of "The 
Genius of the Thames" neatly tied up in a 
parcel and directed — R. Walrond, Esq. — 

[39] 



on searching for the address I find I have mis- 
laid it — Oh my eggregious carelessness ! 

My packages are now at Dolgelly. They 
will arrive here tomorrow morning. Pray 
write soon, and excuse all the faults and fol- 
lies of 

T. L. Peacock. 



Maentwrog, Aug. 1 8, 1810. 

You will begin to think me a caput mor- 
tuum. In fact, I have been very much in- 
disposed, and am so still. Your anecdote of 
Johnson shows him off to the life. Have you 
finished your rustication at Wargrave's, or 
have you not yet commenced it? Let me 
know. 

The Satirist, I see, has done its best to pul- 
verise me, and has brayed me without mercy 
in his leaden mortar. Lord help him! The 
fellow's ignorance is equal to his malevolence. 
He terminates with the most hackneyed of 
all hackneyed quotations, and applies it in 
such a manner as shows him totally unac- 
quainted with its meaning. 

I shall adopt Hume's plan, and never reply 
in any manner whatever to any attack that 
may be made upon me. Payne Knight is 
fond of paper war, and trims up the British 
Critic and the Edinburgh Review most glo- 

[40] 



riously. But I think silent contempt in these 
cases is the most effectual weapon. 

Richardson's bill — the expense of poetry 

— the little probability of encouragement 
from the trade to a work of which the first 
edition was strangled in its birth — and many 
other considerations induce me to think that 
it will be better to defer the re-publication 
of "Palmyra" till some other work of mine 
shall have obtained a degree of popularity, 
which I do not expect will be the case in the 
course of the ensuing winter. The Temple 
of Fame must be gained by slow approaches, 
not taken by storm. What think you? 

Tre-Madoc races, last week, I am told 
were very gay. I did not go near them. Mr. 
M. P. Madocks told some of my acquaintances 
he expected me. As no communication has 
passed between us since the winter I am at 
a loss to conceive what he meant by this. 
Dolgelly assizes are now going forward. Three 
balls are given, one last night, one tonight, 
and one on Monday. Whilst I am writing here, 

— a miserable invalid, by my solitary lamp, 

— all the beaux and belles of Merioneth are 
capering away to the harp of Cadwallader, 
the fiddle of Llewellyn, and the fife and tabor 
of Shankin Ap-Morgan Ap-Owen Ap-Rhys. 
It is to be feared that many of the lasses will 
have their leeks dressed in a way that old 

[41] 



St. David would not have patronized. Pray 
write me as soon as possible. 

T. L. Peacock. 

The aforesaid M. P. sent his compliments 
to me the other day, and hoped he should 
have the pleasure of seeing me at Dolgelly 
assizes. I recollect once taking a bottle of 
ale in the pocket of a post chaise to Ascot 
Heath. The cork was extracted with a tre- 
mendous report, and every drop of the con- 
tents went off in froth. A happy emblem of 
Mr. William Alexander Madocks. I had 
enough of him last winter. I shall take care 
to let it be long enough before I put myself in 
his way again. 

Machynlleth, April 9, 181 1. 

Your letter arrived on Sunday morning. I 
then gave my landlord the bill, and walked up 
to the parson's, as I could not leave the hall 
without taking leave of Jane Gryffyth — the 
most innocent, the most amiable, the most 
beautiful girl in existence.^ The old lady 
being in the way, I could not speak to her 
there, and asked her to walk with me to the 
Lodge. She was obliged to dress for church 
immediately, but promised to call on the 
way. She did so. I told her my intention 

* He married her nine years afterwards. — R. G. 

[42] 



of departing that day, and gave her my 
last remaining copy of the "Genius." She 
advised me to tell my host. I did so, and 
arranged matters with him in a very satisfac- 
tory manner. He will send my remaining 
bills under cover to you. As I told him my 
design of walking home through South Wales, 
he will probably not send them for three 
weeks. If they arrive before me, which I do 
not think they will, have the goodness to lay 
them quietly by. This is coming off with 
flying colours. I then waited my lovely 
friend's return from church, took a final leave 
of her, started at three in the afternoon, and 
reached Dolgelly — eighteen miles — at eight. 
Yesterday morning I walked through a suc- 
cession of most sublime scenery to the pretty 
little lake, Tal-y-llyn, where is a small public 
house, kept by a most original character, who 
in the triple capacity of publican, school- 
master, and guide to Cadair Idris, manages 
to keep the particles of his carcase in contact. 
I ascended the mountain with him, seated 
myself in the Giant's Chair, and "looked 
from my throne of clouds o'er half the world." 
The view from the summit of this mountain 
baffles description. It is the very sublimity 
of Nature's wildest magnificence. Beneath, 
the whole extent of Cardigan Bay; to the 
right, the immense chain of the Snowdonian 
[ 43 ] 



mountains, partly smiling in sunshine, partly 
muffled in flying storm; to the left, the wide 
expanse of the southern principality, with all 
its mountain summits below us. The excur- 
sion occupied five hours. I then returned to 
Minffordd Inn, as he calls it, took some tea, 
and walked hither through a romantic and 
beautiful vale. The full moon in a cloudless 
sky illumined the latter part of my march. 
I shall proceed to Towyn this morning, hav- 
ing promised Miss Scott to call at her uncle's 
seat on my way to England. 

I have a clean shirt with me, and Luarch 
and Tacitus. I am in high health and spirits. 
On the top of Cadair Idris I felt how happy 
a man may be with a little money and a sane 
intellect, and reflected with astonishment 
and pity on the madness of the multitude. 

T. L. Peacock. 



Note. — These early letters of Peacock show 
his style unformed and natural, with the eager in- 
terest of a youth of iive-and-twenty in the poetry 
of the day, to which he was contributing in the 
routine fashion of his period, but with powers of 
observation that soon afterwards found a more 
personal and peculiar form of expression. His ac- 
quaintance with men of letters seems to have been 
limited. His most intimate friend was a young 
bookseller, who was ready to supply him with 
reading matter on easy terms. Peacock at this 

[44] 



outset of his literary life shows little of that 
strange humor, and almost nothing of the lyrical 
facility for which he afterwards became distin- 
guished. His classical and French learning seems 
to be ample; he reads much Latin and French by 
himself, and with ease and relish. He is also in- 
clined to dip into philosophy and history with 
some attention; but what evidently interests 
him most is travel and life in the open air, and 
amid beautiful scenery. He plainly has no fond- 
ness for the sea, which he quits as soon as possible; 
and from travel beyond the narrow seas he seems 
to be withheld by lack of money, — the tour of 
Europe being then reserved for the wealthy. But 
he is making himself familiar with the picturesque 
parts of Great Britain, and is storing his fancy 
with those natural images that will be useful to 
him when he begins to write more like a master 
than like a journeyman, which he literally is in 
these youthful years. He has but few associates, 
and values proportionately such as he has. He 
was approaching English society from below 
rather than on the level of the young noble or 
university graduate, as Byron and Shelley did; 
and is hardly of the social rank of the Lake poets. 
He scoffs at Wordsworth, and seems to value 
Southey more than Wordsworth or Coleridge, 
esteeming Scott above them all. Byron had not 
yet begun to dazzle and eclipse his contempora- 
ries, and is not named in these early letters. He 
will come into some knowledge of Byron in later 
years, through his acquaintance with Hobhouse 
(Lord Broughton) who had travelled in Greece 
with Byron at the very time Peacock was making 
his modest tours in England, Scotland and Wales. 

[45] 



But now we approach a more ambitious poem 
than The Genius of the Thames, for which he 
has been reading up histories ^ of Persia and 
travels of Chardin and others in that land of 
romance. — F. B. S. 



[46] 



LETTERS TO SHELLEY 
Introductory Note by F. B. Sanborn 

These letters date from the place (Marlow 
on the Thames) where Shelley and Peacock 
had lived and rambled together in the pre- 
ceding year, and in the early months of 1818. 
The letters of Shelley are of far more literary 
importance than the communications and 
replies of Peacock; yet the latter supply 
some quite needful information concerning 
the erratic poet and his friends. The letters 
to Shelley in 18 18, which this period covers, 
were ten in number, beginning in March, 
18 1 8, and continuing April 2, probably April 
16, May 14, May 30, June 13; probably June 
27, July 19, August 9, August 30 and Sep- 
tember 13. It may be that the letter of April 
2 was the first of the series, of which the tenth 
was written September 13. The time between 
the sending and the receipt of the letters 
varied greatly, by reason of the journeying 
of Shelley in Italy, — but the shortest time 
seems to have been eighteen days, — the 
letter of Shelley dated July 25 being received 

[47] 



by Peacock at Marlow, August 12. Dr. 
Garnett states that some of the letters were 
lost. Those of Shelley that still exist are 
included in the full collection of Mr. Ingpen 
(London, 1909). 

At the end of the first letter of Peacock's 
here printed, he says, "I shall write invari- 
ably every second Sunday;" but he did not 
quite keep to that methodical resolve; for 
between July 19 and August 9, twenty days 
had elapsed, and between August 9 and 30, 
twenty-one days passed. Mrs. Shelley's 
Frankenstein had been published about the 
time that the Shelleys left England (March, 
181 8), and notices of the book, friendly or 
otherwise, were appearing in the summer of 
18 1 8. The "Marianne" mentioned in the 
correspondence was Mrs. Leigh Hunt, with 
whose husband Shelley occasionally corre- 
sponded, as he did with a few other English 
friends. He regarded himself as having but 
few in England, or the whole world, who cared 
for him, and in one of his letters to Peacock 
(April 6, 1 8 19), he says, "I am regarded by 
all who know or hear of me, except, I think, 
on the whole, five individuals, as a rare 
prodigy of crime and pollution, whose look 
even might infect. This is a large computa- 
tion, and I don't think I could mention more 
than three." In the letter of Peacock dated 
[48] 



May 31, 1818, he refers back to Shelley's 
letter of April 20, which said, — 

I have devoted this summer, and indeed the 
next year, to the composition of a tragedy on the 
subject of Tasso's madness, which I find, upon 
inspection, is admirably dramatic and poetical. 
But you will say I have no dramatic talent; very 
true, in a certain sense; but I have taken the 
resolution to see what kind of a tragedy a person 
without dramatic talent could write. It shall be 
better morality than "Fazio" and better poetry 
than "Bertram" at least. You tell me nothing 
of Rhododaphne, — a book from which, I confess, 
I expected extraordinary success. 

To this hint about his "nympholeptic" 
poem, Peacock made no response, unless in 
some letter that is lost. The Tasso subject 
was pursued by Shelley for a few months, and 
then given up, — perhaps because Byron had 
adopted it. In his letter to Peacock from 
Ferrara, of November 8-9, 18 18, Shelley 
said, — 

Some of the MSS. of Tasso here were sonnets to 
his persecutor, Duke Alfonso, which contain a 
great deal of what is called flattery, written from 
his prison. To me there is more to pity than con- 
demn in these entreaties and praises of Tasso. It 
is as a bigot prays to and praises his god, whom he 
knows to be the most remorseless, capricious and 
inflexible of tyrants, but whom he knows also to 
be omnipotent. . . . Tasso's situation was widely dif- 

[49] 



ferent from that of any persecuted being of the 
present day; for, from the depth of dungeons, 
public opinion might now at length be awakened 
to an echo that would startle the oppressor. But 
then there was no hope, ... in an age when the 
most heroic virtue would have exposed its pos- 
sessor to hopeless persecution, and — such is the 
alliance between virtue and genius, — which un- 
offending genius could not escape. 

At this time Shelley had not begun his 
reading of Goethe, and was not aware that 
the German poet had written a reasonably 
successful drama on Tasso's misfortunes, 
which was translated by Margaret Fuller 
and published by her brother, Arthur Fuller, 
after her death in 1850. 

William Cobbett, mentioned in this corre- 
spondence, had been, in America, a virulent 
opponent of Jeffersonian democracy; but on 
his return to England became one of the most 
vigorous writers against the Tory administra- 
tion, and had the sympathy, to some extent, 
of Peacock (who was a radical) and of Shel- 
ley. The censure of Byron's Fourth Canto of 
Childe Harold in the letter of May 30, and 
a later one, drew forth from Shelley, some 
months after (December 22, 1818), this 
comment: 

I entirely agree with what you say about 
Childe Harold. The spirit in which it is written 

[50] 



is, If Insane, the most wicked and mischievous In- 
sanity that ever was given forth. It is a kind of 
obstinate and self-willed folly, in which he hardens 
himself. I remonstrated with him in vain [at 
Venice] on the tone of mind from which such a 
view of things alone arises. For its real root is 
very different from its apparent one. Nothing 
can be less sublime than the true source of these 
expressions of contempt and desperation . . . 
He is heartily and deeply discontented with him- 
self; and contemplating in the distorted mirror 
of his own thoughts the nature and the destiny of 
man, what can he behold but objects of contempt 
and despair.'* But that he is a great poet I think 
the address to Ocean proves. I do not doubt, and 
for his sake I ought to hope, that his present career 
must end soon in some violent circumstance. 

It did end in his liaison with the Countess 
Guiccioli, and in his removal to the neighbor- 
hood of Shelley, at Pisa, who always exercised 
a good Influence over him, and to whom By- 
ron, though pecuniarily mean, was more just 
than most of his literary contemporaries. 

In the letter of June 14, 18 18, Peacock 
quotes for Shelley some of the most offensive 
passages in Southey's review of Mrs. Shel- 
ley's first novel, and speaks of Leigh Hunt. 
^^Ut Huntice loquar^' means, of course, "to 
speak in Hunt's style." "Clare" is Jane 
Clalrmont, who lived with the Shelleys for 
years after her affair with Byron, though in 
no way related to Mrs. Shelley. She was the 

[51] 



brilliant daughter of the second Mrs. God- 
win, by a former marriage with an English- 
man named Clairmont. She wrote admirable 
letters to Shelley, Trelawny and others; and 
long outlived all the Shelley and Byron circle 
in Switzerland and Italy, — dying at Florence 
in 1879. Several of the autograph manu- 
scripts of Shelley, given by her to an American 
friend, Edward Silsbee, of Salem, are now in 
Harvard College Library. She was the mother 
of Byron's daughter Allegra, as Mrs. Musters 
of the Chaworth family may have been of 
the daughter called Medora Leigh, of whom 
Mrs. Leigh assumed the care and was charged 
with the parentage. 

In the letter of July 5, the list of books sent 
shows the miscellaneous nature of Shelley's 
reading. The Proces de Fualdes was the 
stenographic report of a remarkable mur- 
der trial in southern France, which was pub- 
lished in the Paris dailies in 1817, and again, 
in a volume, in 18 18, — perhaps the most 
celebrated of criminal trials in France during 
the Restoration of the Bourbons. 

Nightmare Abbey was not read by Shelley 
for nearly a year after the announcement of 
it. He then wrote from Leghorn (June 20, 
1819):- 

Enough of melancholy! Nightmare Ahhey, 
though no cure, is a palliative. I have just re- 

[52] 



ceived a parcel containing it, by the way of Malta. 
I am delighted with it. I think Scythrop a char- 
acter admirably conceived and executed; and I 
know not how to praise sufficiently the lightness, 
chastity and strength of the language of the whole. 
It perhaps exceeds all your works in this. The 
catastrophe is excellent. I suppose the moral is 
contained in what Falstaff says, — "For God's 
sake, talk like a man of this world." And yet, 
looking deeper into it, is not the misdirected en- 
thusiasm of Scythrop what Jesus Christ calls 
"the salt of the earth"? 

Considering that Scythrop was a friendly 
caricature of Shelley himself, this comment is 
curious. Peacock's next letter, of July 19, 
dwelt upon the unwonted warmth and dry- 
ness of the English summer; very similar, I 
fancy, to the summer of 1893, when I was in 
London for three weeks without seeing a drop 
of rain; and the heat, for England, was ex- 
cessive. The political news in this letter was 
little, but continued the attack of a fort- 
night before on Wordsworth and his Tory 
friends. 

Brougham was an acquaintance of Shelley's, 
and had been consulted in some of his law- 
suits. A letter of August 11 from Peacock 
seems to be missing; the next one in this 
series is dated August 30, and acknowledges 
the receipt of one from Shelley, written from 
the Baths of Lucca, July 25, in which there is 
[S3] 



this mention of Nightmare Abbey, before he 
had seen it: — 

You tell me that you have finished the novel. 
I hope you have given the enemy no quarter. Re- 
member it is a sacred war. We have found an 
excellent quotation in Ben Jonson's Every Man in 
his Humour. I will transcribe it, as I do not think 
you have these plays at Marlow. [Here the pas- 
sage, Act III, scene I.] This last expression, 
"Have you a stool there to be melancholy upon?" 
would not make a bad motto. 

Accordingly Peacock made it his motto for 
the novel, then printing. Shelley also said in 
the same letter that he was translating the 
Symposium of Plato, which he did in ten 
mornings, and to which he wrote a prefatory 
essay, — both now printed, though the latter 
was but a fragment. The Essay mentioned in 
this letter of August 30, was an attack on en- 
thusiastic poetry, — to which Shelley's "De- 
fence of Poesy" may be taken as the answer. 
The Latin quotation, Hoc sublime candens, 
etc. "That Brilliancy on high which we all 
entitled Jove," is from Ennius, the ancient 
poet, and is quoted by Cicero in his Nature of 
the Gods. Ambrogettr and Miss Milanie were 
opera singers and dancers, whom Shelley had 
heard in Don Giovanni before he left London. 
The comments on Frankenstein, Mrs. Shelley's 
most successful novel, whose authorship was 

[54] 



a mystery for a time, were agreeable to both 
the Shelleys. Walter Scott had treated it 
handsomely in "Blackwood." 

Peacock's next letter, of September 13, 
is in some sense a reply to both Shelley's of 
July 25 and August 16, and gives the fullest 
account of Nightmare Abbey available, till 
the book itself should arrive, in the edge 
of winter. The Butler from whom its first 
motto is taken was Samuel Butler, who wrote 
Hudibras and other pieces in prose and verse, 
and who was an author more to Peacock's 
liking than to Shelley's. Morris Birkbeck, 
whose book was new in 1818, was an English- 
man who had visited the States west of 
Ohio after the war with England ended in 
181 5; and whose observations there led to a 
considerable emigration of English farmers, 
as the earlier book of St. John de Crevecoeur 
had done at the close of our Revolutionary 
War. The "Northwest Territory" then in- 
cluded all west and northwest of the State 
of Ohio, and General Harrison, afterwards 
President for a month in 1 841, was its first 
Governor. 

A few of Peacock's letters are now missing; 
one must have been written at the end of 
September, and another in October, 1818; 
one, we know, was written November i, for 
Shelley mentions receiving it. The next after 

[55] 



this Is that dated at Marlow, November 29, 
in which he repHes to Shelley's observations 
on Tasso's imprisonment (already quoted), 
written November 9. The allusions to the 
shooting of Marshal Ney and General Labe- 
doyere in France, were events already three 
years old; the proceedings of Castlereagh in 
Ireland were twenty years before. "Night- 
mare Abbey" is mentioned at last, as having 
left London before the middle of November, 
along with the other books and Reviews 
named in this letter. The extent of Shelley's 
charities may be guessed at (they were 
never known) from passages in this letter 
and the next one, of December 15. Five 
years before, when visiting his mother at 
Field Place, in the absence of his father. Sir 
Timothy Shelley, the poet, then not quite 
twenty-one, met with a young army officer, 
four years younger. Captain Kennedy, who 
afterwards gave a faithful description of 
Shelley's looks and manners, with minor 
particulars : — 

He received me with frankness and kindliness, 
as if he had known me from childhood, and at 
once won my heart. His eyes were most expres- 
sive, his complexion beautifully fair, his features 
exquisitely fine; his hair was dark, and no pecu- 
liar attention to its arrangement was manifest. 
In person he was slender and gentlemanlike, but 

[56] 



inclined to stoop; his gait was decidedly not mili- 
tary. There was an earnestness in his manner, 
and such perfect gentleness of breeding, and 
freedom from everything artificial as charmed 
every one. The generosity of his disposition and 
utter unselfishness imposed upon him the neces- 
sity of strict self-denial in personal comforts; 
consequently he was most economical in his dress. 
He one day asked how we liked his coat, the only 
one he had brought with him. We said it was 
very nice; it looked as if new. "Well, it is an old 
black coat which I have had done up, and smart- 
ened with metal buttons and a velvet collar." 
. . . He reasoned and spoke like a perfect gentle- 
man, and treated my argument, — boy as I was, 
— with as much consideration and respect as if I 
had been his equal in ability and attainments. 
He soon left us, and I never saw him after, but I 
can never forget him. He was an amiable, gentle 
being. 

Shelley's generosity was constantly mani- 
fested in giving away his money (of which 
his father's churlishness allowed him but a 
scant supply), to any poor person whose case 
appealed to him. It is not to be doubted that 
Peacock's friend Warton got his share of 
Shelley's disposable funds, — all the more, 
because he was at Marlow (which Shelley 
loved) and was Peacock's friend. 

Shelley gave little direct attention to the 
items of news, general or literary, which Pea- 
cock gave him in these letters ; indeed, he did 

[57] 



not receive them, often, till their news was old, 
because he was rambling about Italian towns, 
visiting picture galleries, climbing Vesuvius, 
exploring Pompeii, of which, as well as of 
the paintings and statues, he gave Peacock 
admirable descriptions. At Bologna he was 
specially pleased with the Guidos to be seen 
in the gallery where Raphael's Saint Cecilia 
is: — 

I saw many of Guido, — one a Samson, drink- 
ing water out of an ass's jaw-bone, in the midst 
of the slaughtered Philistines. Why he is sup- 
posed to do this, God who gave him this jaw-bone 
alone knows; but certain it is that the painting is 
a very fine one. The figure of Samson stands in 
strong relief in the foreground, colored, as it 
were, in the hues of human life, and full of strength 
and elegance. Round him lie the Philistines in all 
the attitudes of death. In the distance more dead 
bodies; and still further beyond, the blue sea, 
and the blue mountains, and one white and tran- 
quil sail. 

Writing again from Leghorn, August 22, 
1 8 19, Shelley said he had got nothing from 
Peacock since the letter of March 26, and 
added, — 

I most devoutly wish I were living near London. 
My inclinations point to Hampstead; but I do 
not know whether I should not make up my mind 
to something more completely suburban. What 

[58] 



are mountains, trees, heaths, or even the glorious 
and ever-beautiful sky, with such sunsets as I 
have seen at Hampstead, — to friends ? Social 
enjoyment, in some form or other, is the Alpha 
and Omega of existence. . . . What is it you do 
at the India House? Hunt writes and says you 
have got a "situation" in the India House: Hogg 
that you have an "honorable employment:" 
Godwin writes to Mary that you have got "so 
much" or "so much:" but nothing of what you 
do. The devil take these general terms ! Not con- 
tent with having driven all poetry out of the world, 
at length they make war on their own allies, — 
nay, on their very parents, dry facts. If this had 
not been the age of generalities, any one of these 
people would have told me what you did. 

A few weeks after, it seems that the five 
persons who valued Shelley's authorship had 
increased to eight; for he instructed his 
London publisher, Charles Oilier, to "send, 
whenever I publish, copies of my books to 
the following people from me: Mr. Hunt, 
Mr. Peacock, Mr. Horace Smith, Mr. God- 
win, Mr. Keats, Lord Byron (at Murray's), 
Mr. T. J. Hogg, Mr. Thomas Moore." 

September 9, 18 19, he sends Peacock his 
tragedy of The Cenci; but no letters from 
Peacock answering those questions, or ac- 
knowledging the books, appear in our collec- 
tion. In November, 1820, Shelley wrote to 
Peacock from Pisa, and said in part: — 

[59] 



The box containing your Essay against the cul- 
tivation of Poetry has not arrived; my wonder, 
meanwhile, in what manner you support such a 
heresy in this matter-of-fact and money-loving 
age, holds me in suspense. Thank you for your 
kindness in correcting "Prometheus," which, I 
am afraid, gave you a great ^ deal of trouble. 
Among the modern things which have reached 
me is a volume of poems by Keats; in other re- 
spects insignificant enough, but containing the 
fragment of a poem called "Hyperion."^ I dare 
say you have not time to read it; but it is cer- 
tainly an astonishing piece of writing, and gives 
me a conception of Keats which, I confess, I had 
not before. 

To this, in December, Peacock replied in 
the letter dated the 4th, and plainly implied 
that he saw no great merit In Hyperion; 
and he spoke very slightingly of Landor, 
styling him, "this frothy personage." Of 
Barry Cornwall (B. W. Procter) he spoke 
even more contemptuously, and of poetry In 
general, angrily. 

Shelley's letter dated September 25, 1821, 
of which Peacock speaks in his rather chilling 
letter In October, 1821, has not been preserved; 
but Its commissions seem to have been faith- 
fully performed by Peacock. "Jane" in this 
letter Is Mrs. Peacock (Jane Griffiths), to 
whom Peacock had been married a year or 
two, after an engagement of many years. 

[60] 



The child mentioned afterwards became the 
wife of George Meredith, if I am not mis- 
taken. Shelley had suggested to Peacock 
that he would like to go out to India in some 
capacity, — perhaps at the court of a native 
prince; hence the decided negative given in 
this letter, and the friendly, but rather con- 
descending, offer to find some practical occu- 
pation for the visionary poet, who often felt 
the need of more income. 

The "Elegy on Keats" was Adonais, of 
course, which in Peacock's letter of February 
28, 1822, he briefly criticises. Shelley valued 
this poem highly, and in September, 1821, 
wrote to his publisher, Oilier, — "'Adonais,' 
in spite of its mysticism, is the least imperfect 
of my compositions; and as the image of my 
regret and honor for poor Keats, I wish it to 
be so. I am especially curious to hear the 
fate of 'Adonais.' I confess I should be sur- 
prised if that poem were born to an immortal- 
ity of oblivion." To Peacock, in the letter of 
January 11, 1822, which was answered Feb- 
ruary 28, Shelley said: "You will have seen 
my * Adonais,' and perhaps my 'Hellas,' and 
I think, whatever you may think of the sub- 
ject, the composition of the first will not dis- 
please you. I wish I had something better 
to do than to furnish this jingling food called 
verse, for the hunger of oblivion; but I have 

[61] 



not, and since you give me no encourage- 
ment about India, I cannot hope to have." ^ 

The Maddocks affair, of which Peacock 
wrote in this last letter to Shelley (who died 
in the following July), grew out of the resi- 
dence of the family at Marlow, near Maddocks, 
in the autumn of 1817, when Shelley, who was 
much in debt, was desirous of leaving England 
(which he did early in 18 18), wrote from 
London to his wife at Marlow: "I would ad- 
vise packing up all the books which we deter- 
mine to take with us, in a large box; I would 
then lock up the library; first seeing Mad- 
docks, and putting the safety of the whole in 
his charge." 

What afterwards happened, and what was 
the amount of Shelley's debt to Maddocks in 
1822, we are not informed. Maddocks prob- 
ably had sustained losses, and had good reason 
to insist on the payment of what was due him 
from Shelley. In the rest of this last letter, 
Peacock tells what he has done in literature, 
in the three years past. Rhododaphne had 
been published in 18 17, and Shelley had 
written an enthusiastic notice of it for Hunt's 
"Examiner," but it did not get in. 

* Peacock afterwards wrote: "He had expressed a 
desire to be employed politically at the court of a native 
prince, and I had told him that such employment was 
restricted to the regular service of the East India 
Company." 

[62] 



Letters to Shelley 

Marlow, May 30, 181 8. 

My dear Shelley, — Since I wrote last I 
have received a number of Constable's "Edin- 
burgh Magazine," containing a notice of 
Frankenstein, very favourable, though not so 
much so as that in "Blackwood's," and not 
so good in any respect. It is not worth post- 
age, but I will include it in the parcel. If you 
remain at Pisa, or near it, the proximity of 
Leghorn will facilitate the receipt of the 
quarterly packet. There were some things 
in your longer letter which I intended to speak 
of; but, to tell you the truth, that letter gave 
me so much pleasure that I was unwilling to 
keep it to myself, and sent It to Marianne 
[Hunt], who has it still. I remember, how- 
ever, you mentioned your design of writing a 
Tragedy on Tasso's madness. I know little 
of the subject, but I cannot think it possible 
that it can be at all theatrical, though in the 
Greek sense perhaps it may be dramatic. 

The renewal of the Bank Restriction Act, 
which it is now generally acknowledged must 
be an annual measure as long as the "system" 
lasts, appears in some instances to have 
"touched monled worldlings with dismay." 

Cobbett is indefatigable. He gives us a 

[63] 



full close-printed sheet every week, which is 
something surprising, if we only consider the 
quality, more especially if we take into ac- 
count the number of his other avocations. 
America has not yet dimmed his powers, and 
it is impossible that his clear exposures of all 
the forms of political fraud should fail of pro- 
ducing a most powerful effect. 

The "Courier" calls fiercely for a censor- 
ship of the weekly press. The Queen has 
been very ill, but is better, to the great joy 
of this loyal nation. 

I have no idea and no wish remaining to 
leave Marlow at all, and when you return to 
England you will find me still here, though 
perhaps not in the same house. I have almost 
finished "Nightmare Abbey." I think it nec- 
essary to "make a stand" against the "en- 
croachments" of black bile. 

The fourth canto of "Childe Harold" is 
really too bad. I cannot consent to be au- 
ditor tantum of this systematical "poisoning" 
of the "mind" of the "reading public." 

We have had since I wrote last a continued 
series of cloudless sunshine and delightful 
warm weather. I have sufficiently conquered 
my out-of-door propensities to confine my- 
self systematically in my study all the fore- 
noon, and I consider this something of an 
achievement in the beginning of summer. I 

[64] 



have not heard from you since my last, and 
am very anxious to know where you are and 
what you are doing. 

I wish I could write you more interesting 
letters ; but there is a great dearth of political 
news, and my own mode of life admits of no 
varieties worth detailing. A solitary study, 
a sail, a walk in the woods — all delightful 
things, and wanting only the participation of 
a congenial mind — are yet, though infinitely 
various in their minutiae, very little capable of 
diversity in narration. 

My very kindest remembrances to Mary 
and Clare. 

Ever most sincerely yours, 

T. L. Peacock. 

I shall write invariably every second Sunday. 

Marlow, June 14, 1818. 
My dear Shelley, — Frankenstein is re- 
viewed in the new number of the "Quar- 
terly," but in no very friendly style. Hunt's 
"Foliage" is roughly handled, and In speak- 
ing of his friends you are alluded to, but not 
named. To the words, "When we consider 
the compositions of many of those with whom 
he [Hunt] has recorded his sympathy and 
agreement in this volume," this note is sub- 
joined: "One of these is now lying before us, 

[65] 



the production of a man of some ability, and 
possessing in itself some beauty; but we are in 
doubt whether it would be morally right to 
lend it notoriety by any comments. We know 
the author's history well. At Eton we re- 
member him notorious for setting fire to old 
trees with burning glasses; no unmeet em- 
blem for a man who perverts his ability and 
knowledge to the attacking of all that is an- 
cient and venerable in our civil and religious 
institutions." In the next page they allude 
to you again, and to your having written 
dBeo'i under your name in the Swiss Album. 
The "Gentleman's Magazine" has a brief 
commendatory notice of Frankenstein. But 
you will see all these things in the packet 
which I am now preparing. 

I write under some degree of doubt of your 
receiving my letter. I know not where you 
may be, and this is the third I have written 
since I received one from you. I communi- 
cate with you like a parson with his congre- 
gation, who has the talking all to himself. I 
have finished "Nightmare Abbey." We have 
this year a genuine and bona fide summer. 
The cloudless sunshine which I mentioned in 
my last has continued another fortnight. 
The heat is intense, and the woods are most 
delightful in the thickness of their shade, for 
the heavy rains of the spring brought out an 
[66] 



unusually luxuriant foliage, which now the 
bright suns of summer set forth in all invit- 
ingness — ut Huntice loquar. 

I never see Hunt, of course, nor hear of him. 
I shall not see London again, unless something 
new and strange should compel me, till 1 8 19. 
Hogg is coming down on Wednesday and we 
are going up the river together to Oxford. 
We think too of walking to Chalgrove Field, 
where Hampden was killed, and to Chequors, 
the seat of Cromwell, in the Chiltern Hills. 

Tell Clare I cannot write a history of Miss 
Milanie till I revisit the sources of informa- 
tion in London. Pray write, and give me an 
account of your wanderings. You must have 
so much to tell, and can tell it so delight- 
fully, that it is a double privation not to hear 
from you. My very kindest remembrances 
to Mary and Clare. All parties concur in 
praising the scenery of Frankenstein. 
Ever most sincerely yours, 

T. L. Peacock. 

I shall number my letters in future, and 
shall be glad if you will do the same, and write, 
as I do, every second Sunday. 

Marlow, July 5, 1818. 

My dear Shelley, — I have sent off a 
small box directed to Mrs. Gisborne for you, 

[67] 



containing the "Cobbett's" and "Examiner" 
from your departure to the present time; the 
"Edinburgh" and "Quarterly Reviews," the 
fourth canto of "Childe Harold," the little 
work of Moore which I mentioned to you, the 
Fudge Family in Paris, Beppo, Le Proces de 
Fualdes, "Constable's Magazine," which con- 
tains a notice of Frankenstein; the pins, and 
the sealing-wax, which formed a part of Mary's 
commission. The tortoise-shell comb I could 
not procure here, nor the nail-brush like Mrs. 
Hunt's, from want of access to the model; 
but as I heard from Oilier that he was going 
to send you a package, I requested him to send 
them. 

The "Examiner" can only be sent through 
the medium of the London Post Office; the 
person to apply to is Mr. Thornhill, at Mrs. 
Freeling's office, in Sherbourne Lane, Lom- 
bard Street. I have written to Oilier to tell 
him this, and requested him to execute the 
commission. If I were to put it into the post 
here, without a cover, it would not be sent; 
and with a cover I should have to pay eighteen 
guineas a year postage with it; and you would 
have to pay not much less, if there be any pro- 
portion in postage here and abroad. In the 
other way of sending it, the expense will fall 
very short of this. Perhaps Oilier will not 
attend to me; therefore, if you still wish to 
[68] 



receive it by post, you had better write to 
him, and repeat the information of the 
manner of sending it. I wrote to him also 
concerning the linen, and requested him to 
include it in his package. I cannot find the 
reviews or magazines of this month contain 
anything of personal interest to you or Mary; 
but my distance from town renders my in- 
formation tardy, though I usually obtain it 
eventually. I procured the books contained 
in the box I have just sent off. Ollier's note, 
informing me that he was going to send you a 
package, is the only information I have had 
from him. 

We have been very tranquil in our rotten 
borough amidst the bustle of the general elec- 
tion, which has been attended in one or two 
places with very riotous proceedings. Sir 
William Curtis has been thrown out in the 
City, and Barclay, in Southwark, has been 
displaced by Sir Robert Wilson. Hood, 
Waithman, Thorpe, and Mr. Wilson, all 
oppositionists, are the four members for the 
City; Calvert, as before, and Sir R. Wilson 
for Southwark; and Romilly and Burdett for 
Westminster. The latter, having been shorn 
of his beams of popularity by Cobbett, was 
hard run by Captain Maxwell, who com- 
manded the "Alceste," who was at one time 
very far ahead of Sir Francis; but the dread 

[69] 



of having the representation of Westminster 
disgraced by a Government nominee recon- 
ciled minor differences, and Sir Francis gained 
his election. So that of all the eight members 
returned by the Metropolis the Government 
could not get in one. "No country," saj^s 
the "Quarterly Review," "was ever in a more 
combustible state than England is at this 
moment," and it proposes, as you will see, a 
remedy, which, as usual with the nostrums of 
that party, is an exasperation of the disease. 

Our fine weather continues. We have such 
a summer as we have heard our grandfathers 
talk of, from the traditions of their progenitors, 
most glorious indeed and most delightful. — 
Sol trouchi tanta givia tu che di noi ti sunpagni. 
I have completed Nightmare Abbey, but it 
will not be published till October. You will 
find me, on your return to England, in the 
same town, but in another house. I am glad 
that your thoughts went to the Thames with 
so much kind remembrance even from the 
poetical Arno. I do not despair of your yet 
living on one of these bordering hills. You 
are very much regretted here and very much 
wished for; but you must not live again in 
the valley. However, this is perhaps throw- 
ing too long a glance into futurity. If Italy 
is beneficial to your health, far be it from me 
to tempt you home. Hogg has passed a week 

[70] 



with me, and we have had some long walks — 
one to Virginia Water; one to Cromwell's 
house at Velvet Lawn, which Hogg said must 
be one of the folds of Parnassus transplanted 
to Buckinghamshire. 

Brougham is contesting Westmoreland 
against the Lowthers. Wordsworth has pub- 
lished an Address to the Freeholders, in which 
he says they ought not to choose so poor a 
man as Brougham, riches being the only 
guarantee of political integrity/ He goes 
farther than this and actually asserts that 
the Commons ought to be chosen by the 
Peers. Now there is a pretty rascal for you. 
Southey and the whole gang are supporting 
the Lowthers, per fas et nefas, and seem in- 
clined to hold out a yet more flagrant speci- 
men of the degree of much degradation to 
which self-sellers can fall under the dominion 
of seat-sellers. The example will not be with- 
out its use. Of course, during election, 
Wordsworth dines every day at Lord Lons- 
dale's. My very kindest- remembrances to 
Mary and Clare. 

Yours ever most faithfully, 

T. L. Peacock. 

* This is a misrepresentation of Wordsworth's warn- 
ing against "carpetbag " candidates; and the assertion 
in the next sentence is not justified by anything in his 
pamphlet. — R. G. 

[7>] 



Marlow, July 19, 1818. 

My dear Shelley, — I suffered three weeks 
to elapse between my two last letters; but I 
now write again on the second Sunday, and 
shall continue to do so as systematically as 
possible. I have changed my habitation, hav- 
ing been literally besieged out of the other by 
horses and children. I purpose to remain in 
the one I am now in till death, fortune, or my 
landlord turns me out. It is cheap, and ex- 
ceedingly comfortable. It is the one which 
Major Kelley lived in when you were here, 
facing the Coiting Place, in West Street. The 
weather continues dry and sultry. I have 
been very late on the river for several even- 
ings, under the beams of the summer moon, 
and the air has been as warm as the shade by 
day, and so still that the tops of the poplars 
have stood, black in the moonlight, as motion- 
less as spires of stone. If the summer of last 
year had been like this, you would not, I 
think, be now in Italy; but who could have 
foreseen it? Do not think I wish to play the 
tempter. If you return to England, I would 
most earnestly advise you to stay the winter 
in a milder climate. Still I do not speculate 
on your return within two years as a strong 
probability, and I think where you are likely 
to take up your abode. Were I to choose the 
[72] 



spot, I would fix you on one of the hills that 
border this valley. Your own taste, and 
Mary's, would perhaps point to the Forest. 
If ever you speculate on these points among 
yourselves I should be glad to understand the 
view you take of them. It is pleasant to plant 
cuttings of futurity, if only one in ten takes 
root. But I deem it a moral impossibility 
that an Englishman, who is not encrusted 
either with natural apathy or superinduced 
Giaourism, can live many years among such 
animals as the modern Italians. 

No number of "Cobbett" has been pub- 
lished for three weeks; it is said he is coming 
home. Brougham has lost the Westmoreland 
election by a small difference of number. The 
Cumberland Poets, by their own conduct on 
this occasion, have put the finishing stroke to 
their own disgrace. I am persuaded there is 
nothing in the way of dirty work that these 
men are not abject enough to do, if the blessed 
Lord (Lonsdale) commanded it, or any other 
blessed member of the holy and almighty seat- 
selling aristocracy to which they have sold 
themselves, body and soul. I hope to have 
another letter from you soon. I shall be glad 
to hear that you have received the box. There 
is nothing new under the political sun, except 
that the forgery of Bank notes increases in a 
compound ratio of progression, and that the 

[73] 



silver disappears rapidly, both symptoms of 
inextricable disarrangement in the machinery 
of the omnipotent paper-mill. 

My very kindest remembrances to Mary 
and Clare. 

Ever most faithfully yours, 

T. L. Peacock. 

Marlow, Aug. 30, 1 81 8. 

' My dear Shelley, — Your letter of the 
25th July has given me extreme pleasure; it 
came the very day after I had sent off my 
last. I judge from it that you enjoy better 
health than usual, and a not inconsiderable 
portion of happiness. Your quotation from 
Jonson is singularly applicable, and I shall 
certainly turn it to account, either in Night- 
mare Abbey or in a Critical Essay which I am 
now writing. I am also scheming a Novel 
which I shall write in the winter, and which 
will keep me during the whole of that season 
at home, in despite even of Ambrogetti and 
Miss Milanie. I do not find this brilliant 
summer very favourable to intellectual ex- 
ertion. The mere pleasure of existence in the 
open air is too absorbing for the energies of 
active thought, and too attractive for that 
resolute perseverance in sedentary study, to 
which I find the long and dreary winter so 
[74] 



propitious. To one who has never been out 
of England, the effect of this season is Hke 
removal to a new world. It is the climate of 
Italy transmitted to us by special favour of 
the gods; and I cannot help thinking that our 
incipient restoration of true piety has pro- 
pitiated the deities, and especially hoc sublime 
candens quod vocamus omnes Jovem. You 
have done well in translating the "Sympo- 
sium," and I hope you will succeed in attract- 
ing attention to Plato, for he certainly wants 
patronage in these days, when philosophy 
sleeps and classical literature seems destined 
to participate in its repose. 

I passed a day or two with St. Croix and 
his bride this last week. I went to the races. 
I met on the course a great number of my old 
acquaintance, by the reading portion of whom 
I was asked a multitude of questions con- 
cerning Frankenstein and its author. It seems 
to be universally known and read. The 
criticism of the "Quarterly," though un- 
friendly, contained many admissions of its 
merit, and must on the whole have done it 
service. It seems the discovery ships have 
failed in their object, and are returning re 
conclamata. 

I have lately read the Thehais of Statius, 
which, though too ornate and inflated, con- 
tains many fine passages, and is certainly well 

[75] 



worth reading. I read Nonnus occasionally. 
The twelfth book, which contains the "Meta- 
morphosis of Ampelus," is very beautiful, 
and concludes with an animated picture of 
the dance of the inebriated Satyrs when 
Bacchus made his first wine-press, by digging 
a hole in a rock, and horn (afterwards sacred 
in consequence) was used instead of cups. 

For the most part, my division of time is 
this: I devote the forenoon to writing; the 
afternoon to the river, the woods, and classical 
poetry; the evening to philosophy — at pres- 
ent, the Novum Organum and the Histoire 
NaturelUy which is a treasury of inexhaustible 
delight. My reading is, as usual at this sea- 
son, somewhat desultory. I open to myself 
many vistas in the great forest of mind, and 
reconnoitre the tracts of territory which in 
the winter I propose to acquire. 

My very kindest remembrances to Mary 
and Clare. 

Ever most sincerely yours, 

T. L. Peacock. 

Marlow, September 13, 181 8. 

My dear Shelley, — A letter from you is 
always a joyful advent to my solitude. That 
of the 1 6th August came a day or two after I 
had sent off my last. I have not heard from 

[76] 



oilier, nor seen any of the proofs you mention. 
Much as I regret your absence, I think you 
will do well at least to winter in Italy. A cold 
and stormy autumn has succeeded, with very 
sudden change, to our brilliant summer, and 
gives no favourable promise of the coming 
winter. I thought I had fully explained to 
you the object of Nightmare Abbey, which 
was merely to bring to a sort of philosophical 
focus a few of the morbidities of modern 
literature, and to let in a little daylight on its 
atrabilarious complexion. I have prefixed to 
it as a motto the following lines of Butler : — 

There's a dark lantern of the spirit 
Which none see by but those who bear it, 
That makes them in the dark see visions, 
And hag themselves with apparitions; 
Find racks for their own minds, and vaunt 
Of their own misery and want. 

Your extract from Jonson follows on a separate 
leaf, with the omission of Knowell's interlo- 
cutions. I shall send it in your Michaelmas 
box, which I am only waiting the publica- 
tion of the "Quarterly Review" to prepare. 
I send these little packages by sea, and a 
vessel is sometimes three months on its 
voyage; but from the time of the arrival of 
the first in Italy you will receive them in 
pretty regular quarterly succession. 

[77] 



Birkbeck's^ Notes on America have fixed 
the public attention on that country in an un- 
precedented degree. He has emigrated, with 
his whole family, from a farm which he occu- 
pied in Surrey to the North-western territory, 
where he has purchased a prairie of four thou- 
sand acres, at the usual Government price of 
two dollars an acre. Multitudes are follow- 
ing his example, even from this neighbour- 
hood. I shall include this work in the box. 
He is a man of vigorous intellect, who thinks 
deeply and describes admirably. The temp- 
tation to agriculturists with a small capital 
must be irresistible; and the picture he pre- 
sents of the march of cultivation and popu- 
lation beyond the Ohio is one of the most 
wonderful spectacles ever yet presented to the 
mind's eye of philosophy. 

The "Edinburgh Review" just published 
has an article on the "State of Parties," the 
cream of which is that the grand panacea for 
the national grievances is to bring the Whigs 
again into power, without reforming the Par- 
liament! The people must be the swinish 
multitude indeed if they can believe this. 
You remember that the grand remedy for 

^ Morris Birkbeck, author of Notes of a Journey in 
America from the Coast of Virginia to the Territory of 
Illinois, London, 1817. This book reached a fifth edi- 
tion by 1819. — R. G. 

[78] 



pauperism proposed by this same " Review " 
was to imbue every man with his Bible. Ben- 
tham has laid a mighty axe to the root of 
superstition in a work which I shall also 
send.^ 

My very kindest remembrances to Mary 
and Clare. 

Yours ever most faithfully, 

T. L. Peacock. 

Marlow, November 29, 1818. 
My dear Shelley, — I have again al- 
lowed a month to elapse without writing to 
you, or rather without sending a letter which 
I did write, and which I thought so very un- 
interesting that I hoped to amend it by a day 
or two's delay, and the day or two, as usual, 
has grown to a fortnight. However, I have 
now got into such a train of good habits that 
I think I can promise to be punctual in future; 
and were I not fearful of the risk of such a 
malediction, I would say, "May Pan never 
be propitious to me if I be not in all coming 
fortnights as regular as the dial." I have 
your very interesting letter from Ferrara, 
and have laid up in consecrated paper the 
morsels of Tasso's dungeon-door. I am 

* Probably his Church of Englandism and its Cate- 
chism examined, London, 181 8; but printed privately 
in the previous year. — R. G. 

[79] 



afraid you judge too well of the modern world 
in saying that no similar iniquity could happen 
now. Think of the dungeons of the Spanish 
Patriots alone; but I could accumulate a pile 
of instances in which public opinion is power- 
less. Think of Ney and Labedoyere and the 
murder of Derby, and Castlereagh in Ireland. 
In the hurry of writing my last, I fell into a 
numerical error. I should have said 1,500 
for 1,3 3 3 J^. The result will be more conclu- 
sive, and you can easily supply it. Since my 
last, Sir Samuel Romilly has destroyed him- 
self, in a paroxysm of grief for the death of 
his wife. 

I dispatched, more than a fortnight ago, 
the second box to the Ship Agents, with posi- 
tive directions to send it by the very first 
opportunity for Leghorn direct. The con- 
tents are: — 

"Examiner," to November 9. 
"Cobbett," eight numbers, all that had been 
published between Midsummer and November 9. 
Cobbett's Yearns Residence in America. 
Birkbeck's Notes on America. 
Birkbeck's Letters from Illinois. 
Tales of my Landlord, second series. 
Nightmare Abbey. 

I suppose I shall be able in my next to send 
the name of the Ship and Master. There is 
a new number of the "Irish Melodies" pub- 

[80] 



lished; and a posthumous work of Madame 
de Stael, — Considerations on the French Revo- 
lution. Should you like me to send these? I 
have the volumes of Lord Byron concerning 
which you enquire. 

I see by the papers that Castle Goring has 
been let, on a repairing lease, for twenty-one 
years, at £20 a year, to the Dowager Mar- 
chioness of Lansdowne. I have heard no 
more of the affairs which took me to London 
last month. I adhere to my resolution of not 
going there at all, unless particular business 
should call me, and I do not at present foresee 
any that is likely to do so. I am writing a 
comic Romance of the Twelfth Century ^ 
which I shall make the vehicle of much oblique 
satire on the oppressions that are done under 
the sun. I have suspended the Essay till the 
completion of the Romance. The political 
pamphlet I shall publish about the meeting of 
Parliament. I have thought of an historical 
work, which would be more useful than any I 
have yet planned. When I have time and 
materials, I shall set about it in earnest; so 
that, with so much occupation, present and 
future, I feel no regret for the charms of the 
Metropolis. I rise every morning at half-past 
5, and write before breakfast, by lamplight. 

* Maid Marian. 

[81] 



MlUy's relations have often enquired for her 
of Maddocks. I have sent them word by him 
that I will give them £i at Christmas In the 
manner you desire. As to remitting It, you 
may as well defer doing so till you have some 
other commission, when you may write a draft 
on Brooks for both. Perhaps, If you are not 
very poor, you will be inclined to make a com- 
mission on the following ground : a young man 
of the name of Warton, a grandson of the 
Dr. Warton who wrote on Pope, has come to 
this town In a state of great destitution. He 
has a wife and two children, and not a six- 
pence In the world. His object is to keep a 
day-school, in which he Is likely to succeed, 
if he can keep his neck above water till his 
undertaking becomes productive. Having no 
money to purchase furniture, he hired about 
£4 worth of wretched things of Crake, for 
which he pays 45. a-week, that Is 260 per cent, 
per annum. I have spoken to Maddocks, who 
is getting some articles of furniture together, 
which he has offered to lend them gratui- 
tously. I have him to dinner occasionally, and 
render him what other little service I can, 
which you know is little enough, and I apply 
in all quarters I can think of to raise a small 
subscription for him. He appears to me to 
deserve assistance. He is an energetic and 
intelligent man, with many of those liberal 

[82] 



qualities which are more beneficial in general 
to all who come in contact with the man 
than to the possessor himself. I shall be able 
to prevail on one or two of the tradesmen to 
send their children to him; but my voice will 
not be good for him in many cases. There 
were some ladies in Eeles's shop who observed 
to young Tyler that they were much pleased 
with Mr. Warton's appearance, but did not 
know that they could venture to send their 
children to him, for they were doubtful of his 
principles, from seeing him so much with Mr. 
Peacock, "who keeps everybody from going 
to church." He is a man who must have done 
well if he had not married. However, that is 
past praying for; and a wife is an Indispen- 
sable qualification to a schoolmaster; and, as 
I have said, I think he has a good chance of 
eventual success; and If you can spare any- 
thing for him, I am of opinion that It will be 
well bestowed. 

My very kindest remembrances to Mary 
and Clare. 

Yours ever most sincerely, 

T. L. Peacock. 

Marlow, Tuesday, Dec. 15, 181 8. 

• My dear Shelley, — Since I wrote last I 
have received your two letters from Bologna 

[83] 



and Rome. Your descriptions of paintings 
are truly delightful; they make pictures more 
visible than I thought they could be made 
through the medium of words. I read them 
to everyone who calls on me — not many 
to be sure; but the general pleasure they give 
convinces me that if you bring home a journal 
full of such descriptions of the remains of art, 
and of the scenery of Italy, they will attract 
a very great share of the public attention, 
and will be read with intense interest by 
everyone che sente il hello, but who, like my- 
self, is rooted like a tree on the banks of one 
bright river. 

An important event has occurred during 
the last week. There have been four capital 
trials for forgery of Bank Notes, and the Jury 
has found the prisoners Not Guilty, expressly 
declaring that they could not believe the evi- 
dence of hired informers, who betrayed men 
into crime; that they could not themselves 
distinguish the forged notes from the true; 
and that unless they were furnished with some 
certain criterion, they would not take the ipse 
dixit of the Bank Inspectors that the notes 
were forged. This is saying that they will 
hang no more men for the murderous paper- 
mill, and that, if its wheel continues to turn, 
it shall be by other means than blood. The 
myrmidons of corruption are aghast. Every 

[84] 



i 



new step of the sounding foot of Time makes 
their rotten edifice tremble; it is dislocated in 
all its joints, and will very soon fall to pieces 
amid the shouts of the world. 

I have altered my day of writing from Sun- 
day to Tuesday, for Tuesday is news-day 
with me, and I can thus give you the latest 
intelligence.^ Maddocks has behaved in the 
kindest manner to Warton; he has lent him 
gratuitously a number of articles of furniture 
and linen, something, in short, of everything 
that is necessary, and has even left money on 
his mantel-piece, and kept him supplied with 
provisions. 

I grow a complete fixture here, and as me- 
thodical as the clock. You can have no 
conception, from what you have seen of its 
outside, how comfortable this house is. I 
never before inhabited one so much to my 
mind, nor in a place so well adapted to all my 
purposes. You much amuse me by telling me 
to part your letters from the "Cobbett's," 
more especially as on the following Saturday 
arrived a packet of "Cobbett's" which were 
lying on my table on Sunday morning when 
your last letter arrived, and was inadvertently 
laid upon them. However, no explosion en- 

^ He seems to imply that he received the London 
Saturday newspaper on Tuesday, and saw no other. 
How unlike present conditions! — R. G. 

[85] 



• 



sued. Cobbett has published his Grammar, 
which I have not received. I shall send it to 
you, of course. 

Yours ever most faithfully, with kindest 
remembrances to Mary and Clare, 

T. L. Peacock. 

London, January 13, 1819. 

My dear Shelley, — I have your letter 
No. 13 from Naples. We are now — my 
mother and myself — in lodgings here, No. 5, 
York Street, Covent Garden; but you had 
better direct your letters for the present "New 
Hummums, London." I now pass every 
morning at the India House, from half past 
ten to half past four, studying Indian affairs. 
My object is not yet attained, though I have 
little doubt but that it will be. It was not in 
the first instance of my own seeking, but was 
proposed to me. It will lead to a very suffic- 
ing provision for me in two or three years. 
It is not in the common routine of office but 
is an employment of a very interesting and 
intellectual kind, connected with finance and 
legislation, in which it is possible to be of 
great service, not only to the Company, but 
to the millions under their dominion. 

I have seen Hunt twice, and was at his 
Twelfth-night party. I do not see how he 
[86] 



could visit Italy without being utterly ruined; 
for what in the interval would become of his 
paper? For my part, it would give me the 
most extreme pleasure to visit you anywhere, 
though I have no aspirations in other respects 
toward any foreign land, and as little towards 
Italy, per se, as to almost any other, France 
always excepted. But the project is incom- 
patible with what is at least a very strong 
probability, that I shall be an integral por- 
tion of Leadenhall Street for fifteen years to 
come. "Admirable" Coulson dined with 
me last Sunday. I thought to puzzle his 
omniscience with a question concerning In- 
dian finance; but I found him quite at home 
in the subject, and he talked as fluently of 
Zemindars,^ Ryots,^ Mokuddims,^ Putwar- 
ries,^ &c., as if he had thought of nothing else 
for the last half-year. 

It is time to send you a third parcel; but 
I have as yet nothing towards it but a soli- 
tary number of the "Edinburgh Review." 
There is a very splendid Pantomime at Covent 
Garden, founded on the Adventures of Baron 
Munchausen. I have seen it twice; but I 
shall not be so much, in proportion, as I used 

' Landholders. 

^ Cultivators. 

^ Head Cultivators of Villages. 

* Village Accountants. 

[87] 



^ to be at the theatres. I believe the Saturday- 
operas will be the extent of my outgoings for 
some time forward. I cannot dine sooner 
than six, and by the time I wake in the even- 
ing it is too late to go anywhere; so I sit up 
reading half the night, and occasionally writ- 
ing, as now to you, at one in the morning. 
Lord Ellenborough is dead. The Queen of 
Spain is dead. Some suspect that she was 
poisoned by the holy conscience-keepers of 
the wretch Ferdinand, in consideration of her 
having possessed some virtues which inter- 
fered with their projects. 

I will attend to Mary's little commission 
about the brush, comb, scissors, penknife, 
pencils, &c. What an idea it does give one 
of Italy, being obliged to send for such things 
from Rome and Naples! I have sent a pound 
to Milly's relations at Little Marlow. I have 
corrected the first sheet of Rosalind and 
Helen. 

My very kindest remembrances to Mary 
and Clare. 

Ever most faithfully yours, 

T. L. Peacock. 

India House, December 4, 1820. 

My dear Shelley, — It has given me 
much pleasure to hear from you again, tarn 
[88] 



longo post tempore. I have had the piano with 
me in London from the first, and have kept 
it regularly tuned. I will deliver it as you 
desire. The person has not yet called. I 
perceive today, in the "Times," a vapouring 
letter, dated Pisa, signed "Walter Savage 
Landor." I marvel if you have seen this 
frothy personage. 

I have just heard a pleasant anecdote: 
there are four missionaries at Serampore, who 
are translating the Scriptures into twenty- 
seven languages. The way in which they do 
it is this: one of the quaternity sits at a 
desk with a Bible before him; under him 
sits a native who understands English and 
Hindostanee. At a table before them sit 
twenty-seven natives, each understanding Hin- 
dostanee and another language. The Mis- 
sionary reads a few words in English, the 
interpreter below him repeats them in, Hin- 
dostanee, and the twenty-seven write them 
down, each in a different language. From 
this ingenious device slight differences of 
idiom have led to essential misprisions of mean- 
ing. "Judge not, lest ye be judged," appears 
in the majority of these translations, "Do 
not justice, lest justice should be done to 
you." 

If I should live to the age of Methusalem, 
and have uninterrupted literary leisure I 
[89] 



should not find time to read Keats's Hyperion, 
Hogg and I are now reading Demosthenes. 
Hogg is at present in town, and will leave for 
a week or two at Christmas. I do not know 
where the Boinvilles are; I have not seen 
them for some time. Considering poetical 
reputation as a prize to be obtained by a cer- 
tain species of exertion, and that the sort of 
thing which obtains this prize is the drivelling 
doggerel published under the name of "Barry- 
Cornwall," I think but one conclusion pos- 
sible, — that to a rational ambition poetical 
reputation is not only not to be desired, but 
most earnestly to be deprecated. The truth, 
I am convinced, is, that there is no longer a 
poetical audience among the higher class of 
minds; that moral, political, and physical 
science have entirely withdrawn from poetry 
the attention of all whose attention is worth 
having; and that the poetical reading public, 
being composed of the mere dregs of the in- 
tellectual community, the most sufficing pass- 
port to their favor must rest on the mixture 
of a little easily-intelligible portion of mawkish 
sentiment, with an absolute negation of rea- 
son and knowledge. These I take it to be the 
prime and sole elements of Mr. Barry Corn- 
wairs "Madrigals." 

Yours ever most faithfully, 

T. L. Peacock. 
[90] 



My kindest remembrances to Mary and 
Clare. Mary has chosen a rich and diversi- 
fied field. I wish her and you all success from 
its cultivation. 

India House, October (1821). 

My dear Shelley, — I have been holiday- 
making among my old haunts in the terres- 
trial paradise, Merionethshire, from the 8th 
of September to the beginning of October; 
and after being so long in populous city pent, 
I have derived the greatest benefit from my 
excursion. I am now once more immersed 
in Indian MSS. 

Your letter from Pisa, September 25th, has 
just reached me. I am glad to find that you 
are likely to have a pleasant addition to your 
society there, and I think your recent fixed- 
ness to one spot a good sign both for it and 
you. I wrote to you on the 2nd of August 
(directing to Livorno), enclosing a box, &c., 
from Beck and English. If you have not re- 
ceived it you will perhaps cause enquiry to 
be made for it. I understand the Gisbornes 
are in town. I have not seen them. Oilier 
has lent my copy of the Elegy on Keats to 
some third party, and I have applied for it in 
vain. I assure you I did not mention the £45 
with any other motive than I have already 
given. Nevertheless, Christmas will be such 

[91] 



a trying time to me, that, as you have sent 
me a draft for that sum, I shall be constrained 
to employ it. 

I should not like your Indian project (which 
I think would agree neither with your mind 
nor body), if it were practicable. But it is 
altogether impossible. The whole of the 
Civil Service of India is sealed against all but 
the Company's covenanted servants; who 
are inducted into it through established 
gradations, beginning at an early period of 
life. There is nothing that would give me so 
much pleasure (because I think there is noth- 
ing that would be more beneficial to you) 
than to see you following some scheme of 
flesh and blood — some interesting matter 
connected with the business of life, in the 
tangible shape of a practical man; and I shall 
make it a point of sedulous enquiry to dis- 
cover if there be anything attainable of this 
nature that would be likely to please and 
suit you. 

We have a charming little girl (now eleven 
weeks old), who grows and flourishes delight- 
fully in this fumose and cinereous atmosphere. 
She prevented Jane from accompanying me 
in my rustication. This time twelvemonth 
we passed our holiday at Marlow. I can take 
four or five weeks every year, and think on 
one of these occasions I shall peep into France, 



though for the most part I shall pay an annual 
visit to Wales. I will see what can be done 
for Maddocks, who, I am afraid, is in very — 
[letter torn] 
My kindest regards to Mary and Clare. 
Yours ever, T. L. P. 



I. H., February 28, 1822. 

My dear Shelley, — I was wishing to 
write to you before I received your last letter, 
containing the papers for Beck and English; 
but, simultaneously with that letter, there 
came upon me such a press of business that I 
have not had a moment to spare before to-day. 
I will send you almost immediately all your 
books which I have in London. The boxes 
which I left with Maddocks he will not give 
up. I have tried fair means with him, to the 
extent of offering him money, but he will not 
be satisfied with less than the total payment 
of your debt to him; and I have tried foul 
means with him, to the extent of setting Star- 
ling upon him, but he is determined to stand 
an action, with which he has been menaced, 
thinking perhaps that I shall not be willing 
to incur so great an expense; more especially 
as he is insolvent; and all the expenses would 
therefore fall upon me, whether I should gain 
or lose the cause. The law is clearly on my 

[93] 



side; but it is too expansive and precarious 
an ocean for my frail vessel to embark on. 
He has the impudence to say, in one of his 
letters to Starling, "Mr. Peacock's assurance 
in demanding books very much surprises me; 
he knows very well that he never left any in 
my care; Mr. Shelley, indeed, left some with 
me, as collateral security for a debt, which he 
has not paid;" and a great deal more to the 
same effect. Of course I should not have left 
the books with Maddocks if I could have sup- 
posed him capable of such complicated vil- 
lany and lying. As it is, I really know not 
what to do in the matter. Fortunately, I 
have a good quantity of the best of them in 
my own keeping, and will send them to you 
without more delay. 

You once mentioned some pamphlet that 
Lord Byron supposed me to have written. I 
never even heard of it. I have published 
nothing since you left England but Nightmare 
Abbey and the Four Ages of Poetry. Cain is 
very fine; Sardanapalus I think finer; Don 
Juan is best of all. I have read nothing else 
in recent literature that I think good for any- 
thing. The poetry of your "Adonais" is very 
beautiful; but when you write you never 
think of your audience. The number who un- 
derstand you, and sympathise with you, is 
very small. If you would consider who and 
[94] 



what the readers of poetry are, and adapt 
your compositions to the depth of their un- 
derstandings, and the current of their sym- 
pathies, you would attain the highest degree 
of poetical fame. Your "Hellas" I have not 
yet seen. My very kindest remembrances to 
Mary and Clare. 

Yours ever most faithfully, 

T. L. Peacock. 
Our little star is cloudless. 



[95] 



AHRIMANES 

"Do you," says Shelley, writing to Peacock 
from Chamouni, July 22, 1816, "who assert 
the supremacy of Ahriman, imagine him 
throned among these desolating snows?" It 
has not hitherto been known when or how 
Peacock "asserted the supremacy of Ahri- 
man," and the remark may well have passed 
for a mere chance sally. Great point, how- 
ever, is now given to it by the discovery of an 
unfinished epic from Peacock's pen on the 
contention between Ormuzd and Ahriman, 
conceived on a larger and bolder scale than 
any of his other poems, and, although, like 
the generality of his more ambitious efforts in 
verse, revealing more artifice than inspiration, 
is undoubtedly adapted to exalt his reputa- 
tion as a poet. Its main interest, notwith- 
standing, is less in connection with Peacock 
than with Shelley, — it having evidently been 
read by the latter, and having left visible 
traces of its influence in his Alastor and The 
Revolt of Islam. 

The original MS. of Ahrimanes in the 
British Museum is a fair copy entirely in Pea- 

[97] 



cock's handwriting. The date of the water- 
mark of the paper, which it is generally safe 
to accept as not very remote from the period 
of composition, is 1810. There is also a tran- 
script, in an unidentified female hand, of 
much later date, and there are two arguments 
in the same handwriting. These transcripts 
are now the property of The Bibliophile 
Society. 

The date of the poem most likely lies be- 
tween 1 81 2, when Peacock published The 
Philosophy of Melancholy, and 18 14, when he 
probably began to write Headlong Hall. The 
adoption of the metre of Childe Harold would 
alone justify the conjecture that it was written 
after the publication of that poem in March, 
1 81 2, even if the last line of stanza 26, canto 
I, were not apparently a reminiscence of a line 
in Childe Harold, — 

Vainly his incense soars, his victim bleeds. 

Shelley, as will be seen, knew Ahrimanes when 
he wrote Alastor in September, 1815. The 
note on the first stanza of canto II may 
allude to one of the prosecutions of D. I. 
Eaton in 181 2 and 181 3 for selling irreligious 
books. 

Peacock has deservedly won high poetical 
reputation in the song, the ballad, and the 
lyrical utterance of subjective feeling; but 

[98] 



his more ambitious efforts with the exception 
of the too little known Rhododaphne have 
been with equal justice pronounced frigid, 
pedantic, and devoid of the essential aroma 
of poetry. Ahrimanes must modify this judg- 
ment. It is indeed not the poetry of inspira- 
tion but of reflection. The poet has manifestly 
sat down to write. It could not be said of 
him, as it might have been of Shelley when 
he composed The Revolt of Islam in the same 
metre, — 

His own mind did like a tempest strong 
Come to him thus, and drive the weary wight 
along. 

But it evinces no small imagination, a real 
gift for picturesque description, and a sur- 
prising power of handling the difficult Spen- 
serian stanza. Edgar Poe has justly praised 
the melodious versification of Peacock's Rho- 
dodaphne, but the metre of Rhododaphne is 
comparatively simple, and we were not pre- 
pared to find the Spenserian form so plastic 
in hands to which it was deemed a stranger. 

The conception of Ahrimanes Is grandiose, 
but does not seem to have assumed a defi- 
nite shape in the author's mind. It will 
be observed that the two arguments printed 
are irreconcilable with each other. According 
to one, Ahrimanes triumphs, according to 

[99] 



the other, he is repelled; and the existing 
fragment of the poem seems to agree with 
neither. It is clear that this could not have 
been intended to be the final form, for we 
are suddenly plunged in medias res, with no 
explanation as to who the hero is, or why 
he is an object of interest to the genius 
Aretina. 

The main interest of Ahrimanes is not so 
much in the poem itself as in the evidence 
it aifords of a hitherto unsuspected influence 
of Peacock upon two of Shelley's principal 
poems, Alastor and The Revolt of Islam. The 
susceptibility which endowed Shelley with 
such power to reproduce external and internal 
impressions rendered him open to the influ- 
ence of other poets. "Do you observe," he 
says in sending Gisborne a copy of Adonais, 
"any traces of 'Faust' in the poem I send 
you? Poets — the best of them — are a very 
chameleonic race; they take the colour not 
only of what they feed on, but of the very 
leaves under which they pass." It would be 
extremely natural that he should be impressed 
by a composition so much in the vein of his 
early favourites, Thalaha and Kehama. The 
influence certainly did not extend to verbal 
imitation, but it seems clear that neither 
Alastor nor The Revolt of Islam would have 
been precisely what it is if Ahrimanes had 
[ 100 ] 



never been perused by him. In both poems 
a voyage plays a considerable part. Part of 
the scenery of Alastor corresponds to that of 
Ahrimanes. Peacock's hero sails down the 
Araxas to the Caspian, and Shelley's, after 
voyaging on the Caspian, emerges from it by 
another river. Various verbal resemblances 
show that when Shelley wrote Alastor, the 
memory of Ahrimanes was still with him, 
though vaguely and perhaps unconsciously. 

Ahrimanes 

The stars grow pale, and o'er the western verge 
Of heaven the moon her parting orb suspends. 
She sinks behind the hill. 

Alastor 

His last sight 
Was the great moon, which o'er the western verge 
Of the wide world her mighty horn suspended. 
With whose dim * beams inwoven darkness seemed 
To mingle. 

Ahrimanes 
The light acacia blooms along the strand. 

^ All the editions read dun, but we feel no hesitation 
in adopting James Thomson's emendation, chronicled 
by Professor Woodberry. The scene revealed by the 
moonbeam might well be dun; not so the beam itself. 
Dun and dim would hardly be distinguishable in Shel- 
ley's writing. — R. G. 

[lOl] 



Alastor 

The ash and the acacia floating hang 
Tremulous and pale. 

The resemblance of The Revolt of Islam to 
Ahrimanes is greater than that of Alastor, 
and the more important inasmuch as it is 
a resemblance of conception and structure. 
This especially applies to the first argument 
as here printed, the second proceeding on 
different and much inferior lines. Both 
poems are founded on the conception of the 
perpetual conflict of the good and evil prin- 
ciples; in the one personified as Ormuzd and 
Ahriman; in the other typified by the Eagle 
and the Serpent. In both the principle of 
evil is represented as for a time triumphant on 
earth, but impotent in heaven. In both the 
followers of Virtue are depicted as youthful 
lovers, who after extraordinary adventures, in 
which the powers of evil have vainly attempted 
their utmost to separate them, are borne away 
in an enchanted boat to an ideal paradise. 
The "oasis, inhabited by an old philosopher 
and his daughter," in Ahrimanes corresponds 
to the retreat to which Laon, in The Revolt 
of Islam, is conveyed by the ancient hermit. 
Direct verbal resemblances are few, but 
the "barrier rock" of Ahrimanes (canto I, 
stanza twelve) seems to reappear in the 
[ 102] 



*' rock-built barrier of the sea" {Revolt, canto 
IV, stanza four); and Shelley may well have 
been thinking of Peacock's — 

For him on earth unnumbered temples rise, 
And altars burn, and bleeding victims die; 
Albeit the sons of men his name disguise 
In other names, that choice or chance supply. 
To him alone their incense soars on high. 
The god of armies — the avenging god — 
Seevah or Allah — Jove or Mars — they cry — 

when he wrote, — 

And Oromaze, Joshua and Mahomet 
Moses and Buddh, Zerdusht and Brahm and Foh, 
A tumult of strange names, which never met 
Before as watchwords of a single woe. 

The same notion of a contest for the dominion 
of the universe between the powers of good 
and evil reappears in Shelley's next great 
work; but whereas in The Revolt of Islam 
Evil is left in possession of the terrestrial world, 
and Good only preserves itself by withdrawal 
to another, Prometheus celebrates the com- 
plete overthrow of Ahriman's counterpart, 
Jupiter. There is therefore small room for an 
influence from Peacock's poem, of which, 
nevertheless, a faint echo seems to linger still. 
Shelley's — 

Which walk upon the sea, and chant melodiously, 
[ 103] 



is the antetype in rhythm of Peacock's — 

All but the eternal stream, that flows melo- 
diously.^ 

We have remarked in another place that 
Disraeli's Revolutionary Epic, compared with 
the works of Shelley after which it is mod- 
elled, affords a perfect exemplification of the 
distinction between false poetry and true. 
This would not hold good of Ahrimanes, 
which is not false poetry but true poetry of 
rather an inferior order. It is the production 
of a really poetical mind, but of a mind on 
this occasion obeying no irresistible impulse 
to composition, and consequently, while dis- 
playing much beauty of a literary kind, de- 
void of that magical felicity of diction which 
is the constant companion, and the only sure 
criterion of the highest order of poetry. 

* In another of Peacock's poems there Is a curious 
echo of a passage in Shelley's Rosalind and Helen — 
And hear, half doubting, half deceived, 
The songs our simple sires believed. 

Peacock, Translation from the Hippolytus 
of Euripides. 
. . . all, though half deceived, 
The outworn creeds again believed. 

Rosalind and Helen. 



[104] 



AHRIMANES — THE ARGUMENT 

Canto I 

Necessity governs the world. Subordinate 
to her are four principal genii — the creating, 
the preserving, the destroying and the restor- 
ing spirits. Obediently to her first command 
the creating spirit. El Oran, poured light on 
chaos, from which mysterious union arose 
Primogenital Love. Under his vivifying in- 
fluence Nature originated and existed in 
purity. This being accomplished in its des- 
tined period, the preserving spirit — Oro- 
mazes — assumed his delegated empire and 
ruled the infancy of Nature when all was 
equality and happiness. This destined period 
being likewise accomplished, the destroyer — 
Ahrimanes — assumed his sway. He brought 
with him into the world every species of moral 
and physical evil, and first corrupted the nature 
of man by making him a hunter, and giving 
him a thirst for blood, whence originated war 
and discord and turbulence, the selfish thirst 
of unbounded possession, the atrocities of 
avarice and tyranny, and superstition. Under 
his iron reign we live, anticipating the des- 
tined period of the restoring power. 
, When the reign of the preserving Spirit was 
[105] 



ended he retired with his genii to the ex- 
tremities of the South, where he drew an 
impenetrable veil around the bowers of his re- 
pose. There the mariner glides over a bound- 
less ocean, and seeks in vain the shores of the 
Southern world. 

But from time to time some of his genii 
come forth to mingle with mankind, knowing 
that through their ministry must the reign 
of the Restorer be brought on. Thus the 
world is never totally abandoned by the 
spirits of good. Few indeed are the favored 
mortals that can know and feel their influence; 
but to them is given an impulse and a power 
of mind which rises triumphant over all the 
tyranny of Ahrimanes. They fix their eyes 
on the heights which futurity promised to 
their posterity, and hold their steady course 
through the evils of life, like that iron bark 
of the enchanter, through the waves of the 
storm; which remained one and indissoluble 
amid the wildest conflicts of wind and sea; 
which might be submerged by superior power, 
but could be neither changed nor broken. 

Such is the picture of the virtuous man 
struggling with calamity, a picture which the 
Preserver contemplates with joy from his 
Southern paradise, which the Restorer hails 
with anticipative delight as the omen of his 
terrestrial reign. 

[io6] 



When Ahrimanes first assumed his sway- 
over man and the world, his genii rapidly 
effected their task of misery and corruption. 
Blood flowed in feuds and in war, at the beck 
of tyrants, and on the altars of superstition, 
where he was worshipped under unnumbered 
names by the abject and terrified race of man. 
He delighted in the spectacle of war and deso- 
lation; he sent forth beasts of prey, and 
signalized his dominion by storms and earth- 
quakes and volcanoes. Men fell prostrate 
before him, and only seemed emulous who 
should be his most effectual votaries. But as 
he threw his glance over the world he dis- 
covered that some of the genii of Oromazes 
still lingered among mankind in the mountain- 
vales and by the shores of the lonely torrent, 
and that some individuals of the human race 
still resisted his power. 

In particular he distinguished an island in 
the Araxes, where the inhabitants yet lived in 
primitive simplicity. To this island he de- 
spatched a chosen number of his genii. They 
effected their task of corruption with rapid- 
ity; but two lovers, Darassah and Kelasris, 
remained incorruptible. Against these there- 
fore they directed the full torrent of their 
vengeance. The genii of Oromazes watched 
over their fate; but the power of the evil 
genii became gradually superior. 

[107] 



Discord and violence and rapine now reign 
among the islanders. The father of Kelasris 
tears her from Darassah to give her to an- 
other. She flies to her lover's cottage, whither 
she is pursued; but he succeeds in conveying 
her to the shore of the Araxes, where they 
find a boat in which they embark. 

Descending the stream they take refuge 
among some peasant worshippers of Oromazes. 

Canto II 

Reflections on instability of human things. 
An inundation of the river destroys the village. 
Driven from their asylum they wander a long 
and weary way and at length arrive at a city, 
where they observe innumerable pictures of 
misery and vice. The sultan sees Kelasris, for- 
cibly takes her from her lover, and confines her 
in his seraglio. Darassah ineffectually attempts 
to defend her, and is conveyed to a prison. 

At midnight the city is besieged by a hostile 
force — taken and sacked — the prison is 
broken open — the seraglio is on fire. Daras- 
sah enters it, kills the sultan, finds Kelasris 
and escapes with her to the desert. They live 
peacefully in an oasis. 

They discover a vast body of sand rushing 
towards them from a distance. They escape, 
but the oasis is buried. 

[io8] 



They fall into the power of robbers who sell 
them as slaves. 

Darassah is sent to labour in a diamond 
mine. The Ahrimanic genius of the mine ad- 
dresses him. 

He escapes from the mine and enters a deep 
forest. Despair and meditated suicide. He 
meets Kelasris accompanied by a beautiful 
female who has escaped with her from the 
seraglio to which the Arabs had sold her. 

The noise of pursuit is heard. They fly. 
A temple of Oromazes appears in view. The 
high priest makes his appearance. They ap- 
peal to his protection, which he promises. 
The sultan appears. The priest says he can- 
not oppose God's vicegerent on earth, and is 
about to deliver up his suppliants when the 
female companion of Kelasris discovers herself 
as an Oromazic genius. She reprobates the 
priest for profaning the name of Oromazes by 
calling himself his minister, when he is in 
reality the slave of Ahrimanes; but as the 
dedication of the temple to his name gives 
Oromazes power over it, she will destroy it 
and its pernicious minister. She destroys 
the temple, but an Ahrimanic genius inter- 
poses and saves the priest, saying that priests 
and kings are the peculiar objects of the care of 
Ahrimanes, and that while they serve him 
faithfully they shall be safe. 
[ 109] 



The lovers escape to a city on the shore of 
the Persian Gulf. The city is afflicted with 
famine and pestilence. Darassah is seized by 
the latter. Kelasris attends him. He recovers. 

They embark on board a vessel in the port, 
and sail into the Pacific Ocean. Storm and 
shipwreck. Darassah is thrown on shore, and 
afterwards Kelasris, apparently dead. She 
revives. Other bodies and fragments of wreck 
washed on shore. Here they find a simple 
people — a variety of the Lotophagi. A vol- 
canic eruption devastates the island. An 
Ahrimanic genius appears and desires them 
to pay homage to Ahrimanes. They refuse. 
"Perish then," says the genius, "with the 
sinking isle which the waves of the sea shall 
soon overwhelm." She vanishes. The Oro- 
mazic spirit appears, commends them, and 
tells them they are worthy to participate in 
the happiness of the Southern world; inter- 
mingling her speech with a prophecy of the 
reign of the Restorer. She then directs them 
to embark in a small boat which will bear 
them to the dwelling of Oromazes. The poem 
concludes by depicting the submersion of the 
island and the departure of the lovers for the 
Southern world. The boat sails securely on 
though assailed by violent tempests, raised by 
Ahrimanic spirits, imaging the course of virtue 
through the storms of life. 

[I.O] 



AHRIMANES 

CANTO THE FIRST 
I 

In silver eddies glittering to the moon 

Araxes rolls his many-sounding tide. 

Fair as the dreams of hope, and past as soon, 

But in succession infinite supplied, 

The rapid waters musically glide. 

Now, where the cliff's phantastic shadow 

laves, 
Silent and dark, they roll their volumed pride. 
Now, by embowering woods and solemn caves. 
Around some jutting rock the struggling tor- 
rent raves. 

II 

Darassah stands beside the lonely shore, 
Intently gazing on the imaged beam, 
As one whose steps each lonely haunt explore 
Of nymph or naiad, — grove, or rock, or 

stream — 
Nature his guide, his object, and his theme. 
Ah no — Darassah's eyes these forms survey 
As phantoms of a half-remembered dream; 
His eyes are on the water's glittering play; 
Their mental sense is closed — his thoughts 

are far away. 

[Ill] 



Ill 

But central In the flood of liquid light, 

A sudden spot Its widening orb revealed. 

Jet black among the mirrored beams of night, 

Jet black and round as Celtic warrior's shield, 

A sable circle in a silver field. 

With sense recalled and motionless surprise, 

Deeming some fearful mystery there concealed. 

He marked that shadowy orb's expanding size. 

Till slowly from Its breast a form began to rise: 

IV 

A female form; and even as marble pale 

Her cheeks; her eyes unearthly fire Illumed; 

Far o'er her shoulders streamed a sable veil. 

Where flowers of living flame inwoven 
bloomed; 

No mortal robe might bear them unconsumed ; 

A crown her temples bound; on such ne'er 
gazed 

Eyes that had seen primeval kings entombed; 

Twelve points It bore; on every point up- 
raised 

A star — a heavenly star — with dazzling 
radiance blazed. 

V 

Lovely she was — not loveliness that might 
In mortal heart enkindle light desire — 

[112] 



But such as decked the form of youthful 

Night, 
When, on the bosom of her anarch sire, 
With gentler passion she did first inspire 
The gloomy soul of Erebus severe; 
Ere from her breast, on wings of golden fire. 
Primordial love sprang o'er the infant sphere, 
And bade young Time arise and lead the ver- 
nal year. 

VI 

Her right hand held a wand, whose potent 

sway 
Her liquid path, the buoyant waves obeyed. 
Still as she moved, the moon-beams died away, 
And shade around her fell — a circling shade — 
That gave no outline of the wondrous maid. 
Her form — soft gliding as the summer gale — 
In that portentous darkness shone arrayed; 
Shone by her starry crown, her fiery veil. 
And those refulgent eyes that made their 

radiance pale. 

VII 

"Why — simple dweller of the Araxian isle" — 
Thus, as she pressed the shore, the genius 

said — 
"Seek'st thou this spot, to muse and mourn 

the while, 

[113] 



Beside this river's ever-murmuring bed, 
When gentle sleep has her dominion spread 
On every living thing around, but thee? 
The silent stars, that twinkle o'er thy head, 
Shed rest and peace on hill, and flower, and 

tree; 
All but the eternal stream, that flows melo- 
diously." 

VIII 

Solemn her voice, as music's vesper peal 
From distant choir to cloistered echo borne, 
Where the deep notes through pillared twi- 
light steal. 
Breathing tranquillity to souls that mourn. 
The awe-struck youth replied: "Of one so 

lorn 
Canst thou, empyreal spirit, deign require 
The secret woes by which his soul is torn ? 
Sure from the fountain of eternal fire 
Thy wondrous birth began, great Mithra's 
self thy sire. 

IX 

"Through many an age amid these Island- 
bowers 

The simple fathers of our race have dwelt; 

To them spontaneous Nature fruits and 
flowers. 

By toil unsought, with partial bounty dealt; 

[114] 



At Oromazes' sylvan shrine they knelt; 
And morn and eve did choral suppliance flow 
From hearts that love and mingled reverence 

felt. 
To him who gave them every bliss to know 
That simple hearts can wish, or heavenly love 

bestow. 

X 

''But years passed on, and strange perversion 

ran 
Among the dwellers of the peaceful isle; 
And one, more daring than the rest, began 
To fell the grove, and point the massy pile; 
And raised the circling fence with evil wile. 
And to his brethren said: 'These bounds are 

mine;' 
And did with living victims first defile 
The verdant turf of Oromazes' shrine; 
Sad offering sure, and strange, to mercy's 

source divine. 

XI 

"And ill example evil followers drew; 

Till common good and common right were 

made 
The fraudful tenure of a powerful few; 
The many murmured, trembled, and obeyed. 
Then peace and freedom fled the sylvan shade, 

[115] 



And care arose, and toil unknown before; 
And some the hollowed alder's trunk essayed, 
And left, with tearful eyes, their natal shore. 
Swift down the stream they went, and they 
returned no more. 

XII 

"And I too, oft, beyond that barrier rock, 
That hides from view the river's onward 

way — 
Where, eddying round its base with ceaseless 

shock. 
The waves that flash, and disappear for aye, 
Their parting murmurs to my ear convey — 
In fancy turn my meditative gaze. 
And trace, encircled by their powerful sway. 
Some blooming isle where love unfettered 

strays, 
And peace and freedom dwell as here in earlier 

days. 

XIII 

"But one there Is for whom my tears are shed; 
A maid of wealthier lot and prouder line; 
With her my happy infant hours I led; 
And sweet our mutual task, at morn to twine 
The votive wreath round Oromazes' shrine. — 
She mourns, a captive in her father's home — 
Alone I rove, to murmur and repine — 
[n6] 



Alone, where sparkling waves symphonlous 
foam, 

I breathe my secret pangs to heaven's em- 
pyreal dome." 

XIV 

" Leave tears to slaves " — the genius an- 
swering said, — 
"Adventurous deed the noble mind beseems. 
Oh shame to manhood! thus with listless 

tread, 
In tears and sighs and inconclusive dreams 
To waste thy hours by groves and murmuring 

streams. 
I bring thee power for weakness, joy for woe. 
And certain bliss for hope's fallacious schemes, 
Unless thou lightly thy own weal forego. 
And scorn the splendid lot thy bounteous fates 
bestow. 

XV 

"This gifted ring shall every barrier break; 
The maid thou lovest thy wandering steps 

shall share. 
When night returns with her this isle forsake. 
From this thy favored haunt; my guardian 

care 
To waft thee hence, the vessel shall prepare. 
The monarch of the world hath chosen thee 
High trust, and power, and dignity to bear. 

[117] 



I come, obedient to his high decree, 
To set from error's spell thy captive senses 
free. 

XVI 

"Deem'st thou, when blood of living victims 

flows, 
'Mid incense smoke, in denser volumes curled. 
That Oromazes there a glance bestows, 
A glance of joy, to see the death-blows hurled? 
No — far remote, in orient clouds enfurled, 
Nor prayer nor sacrificial rite he heeds. 
His reign is past; his rival rules the world. 
From Ahrimanes now all power proceeds; 
For him the altar burns; for him the victim 

bleeds. 

XVII 

"Parent of being, mistress of the spheres, 
Supreme Necessity o'er all doth reign; 
She guides the course of the revolving years. 
With power no prayers can change, no force 

restrain; 
Binding all nature in her golden chain. 
Whose infinite connection links afar 
The smallest atom of the sandy plain 
And the last ray of heaven's remotest star. 
That round the verge of space wheels its re- 
fulgent car. 

[ii8] 



XVIII 

" She to two gods, sole agents of her will, 
By turns has given her delegated sway; 
Her sovereign laws obedient they fulfil; 
Inferior powers their high behests obey. 
First Oromazes — lord of peace and day — 
Dominion held o'er nature and mankind. 
Now Ahrimanes rules, and holds his way 
In storms; for such his task by her assigned, 
To shake the world with war, and rouse the 
powers of mind. 

XIX 

" She first on chaos poured the streams of light 
And bade from that mysterious union rise 
Primordial love; the heavenly Lion's ^ might 
Bore him rejoicing through the new-born skies. 
Then glowed the infant world with countless 

dyes 
Of fruits and flowers; and Virgin nature 

smiled, 
Emerging first from ancient night's disguise 
And elemental discord, vast and wild. 
Which primogenial love had charmed and 

reconciled. 

* This zodiacal mythology, so far as it goes, pre- 
cisely corresponds with the theories of Mr. J. T. 
Newton as expounded in Peacock's recollections of 
Shelley. — R.G. 

[119] 



XX 

"Then man arose; to him the world was 

given, 
Unknowing then disease, or storm, or dearth; 
The eternal Balance, in the central heaven, 
Marked the free tenure of his equal birth. 
And equal right to all the bounteous earth 
Of fruit or flower, his pristine good, might 

yield. 
Nor private roof he knew, nor blazing hearth. 
Nor marked with barrier-lines the fruitful 

field. 
Nor learned in martial strife the uprooted oak 

to wield. 

XXI 

"Then Oromazes reigned. — Profoundly calm 
His empire, as the lake's unruffled breast, 
When evening twilight melts in dews of balm, 
And rocks and woods in calm reflection rest. 
As if for aye indelibly imprest 
Were those fair forms, in waveless light 

arrayed. — 
No sigh, no wish, the peaceful heart confest; 
Save when the youth, beneath the myrtle 

shade. 
Wooed to his fond embrace the easy-yielding 

maid. 

[ 120] 



XXII 

"No pillared fanes to Oromazes rose; 
For him no priest the destined victim led. 
The choral hymn, in swelling sound that 

flows, 
Where round the marble altar streaming red 
The slow procession moves with solemn 

tread, 
His empire owned not; but his bounty grew, 
By prayer or hymn nor sought nor merited; 
No altar but the peaceful heart he knew — 
His only temple-vault, the heaven's ethereal 

blue. 

XXIII 

"Such was the infant world, and such the 

reign 
Of cloudless sunshine and oblivious joy; 
Till rose the Scorpion in the empyreal plain, 
In fated hour, their empire to destroy, 
And with unwonted cares the course alloy 
Of mortal being and terrestrial time; 
That man might all his god-like powers 

employ 
The toilsome steep of wealth and fame to 

climb. 
To rugged labor trained and glory's thirst 

sublime. 

[I2I] 



XXIV 

"To Ahrimanes thus devolved the power, 
Which still he holds through all the realms of 

space. 
He bade the sea to swell — the storm to 

lower — 
And taught mankind the pliant bow to brace, 
And point the shaft, and urge the sounding 

chase. 
And force from veins of flint the seeds of 

fire; 
Till, as more daring thought found gradual 

place, 
He bade the mind to nobler prey aspire, 
Of wai^ and martial fame kindling the high 

desire. 

XXV 

"For him on earth unnumbered temples rise, 
And altars burn, and bleeding victims die; 
Albeit the sons of men his name disguise 
In other names, that choice or chance supply, 
To him alone their incense soars on high. 
The god of armies — the avenging god — 
Seevah or Allah — Jove or Mars — they cry; 
'Tis Ahrimanes still that wields the rod; 
To him all Nature bends, and trembles at his 
nod. 

[ 122] 



XXVI 

"Yea, even on Oromazes' self they call, 
But Ahrimanes hears their secret prayer. 
Not in the name that from the lips may fall. 
But in the thought the heart's recesses bear, 
The sons of earth the power they serve de- 
clare. 
Wherever priests awake the battle strain, 
And bid the torch of persecution glare, 
And curses ring along the vaulted fane — 
Call on what god they may — their god is 
Ahrimane. 

XXVII 

"Favor to few, to many wealth he shews; 
None with impunity his power may brave. 
Two classes only of mankind he knows. 
The lord and serf — the tyrant and the slave. 
Some hermit-sage, where lonely torrents rave, 
May muse and dream of Oromazes still; 
Despised he lives, and finds a nameless grave. 
The chiefs and monarchs of the world fulfil 
. . . Ahrimane's behests — the creatures of 
his will. 

XXVIII 

" Say, — hadst thou rather grovel with the 

crowd. 
The wretched thing and tool of lordly might, 

[123] 



Or, where the battle-clarion brays aloud, 
Blaze forth conspicuous in the fields of fight, 
And bind thy brow with victory's chaplet 

bright. 
And be the king of men? — Thy choice is 

free. — 
Receive this ring. — Observe the coming 

night. — 
The monarch of the world hath chosen thee 
To spread his name on earth, in power and 

majesty." 

XXIX 

She said, and gave the ring. The youth re- 
ceived 
The glittering spell, in awe and mute amaze; 
Standing like one almost of sense bereaved. 
That fixes on the vacant air his gaze. 
Where 'wildered fancy's troubled eye surveys 
Dim-flitting forms, obscure and undefined. 
That doubtful thoughts and shadowy feelings 

raise. 
Leaving no settled image on the mind; 
Like cloud-built rocks and towers, dissolved 
ere half combined. 

XXX 

Nor stayed she longer parle; but round her 

form 
A sable vapor, thickly-mantling, drew 

[124] 



Its volumed folds, dark as the summer's storm. 
It wrapped her round, and in an instant flew. 
Scattered like mist, — though not a zephyr 

blew, — 
And left no vestige that she there had been. 
The river rolled in light. The moonbeams 

threw 
Their purest radiance on the lonely scene;" 
And hill, and grove, and rock, slept in the ray 

serene. 

AHRIMANES 

CANTO THE SECOND 
I 

Spake the dark genius truly, when she said, 
That Ahrimanes rules the mundane ball .? 
That man, in toil and darkness doomed to 

tread. 
Ambition's slave and superstition's thrall. 
Doth only on the power of evil call. 
With hymn, and prayer, and votive altar's 

blaze ? 
Alas ! wherever guiltless victims f all,^ 

' It is possible to sacrifice victims — human victims 
— without cutting their throats or shedding a drop of 
their blood, and that too under the name and with the 
specious forms of justice. It is possible to display the 
sword of strife and be a very effective member of the 
church militant without the visible employment of tem- 
poral weapons. 

[125] 



Wherever priest the sword of strife displays, 
Small trace remains, I ween, of ancient Oro- 
maze. 

II 

Yet If on earth a single spot there be. 
Where fraud, corruption, selfishness and pride 
Wear not the specious robes of sanctity, 
With hypocritic malice to divide 
The bonds of love and peace by nature tied 
'Twixt man and man, far as the billows roll, — 
Where Idle tales, that truth and sense deride. 
Claim no dominion o'er the subject soul, — 
There Oromazes still exerts his mild control. 

Ill 

But not in fanes where priestly curses ring — 
Not in the venal court — the servile camp — 
Not where the slaves of a voluptuous king 
Would fain overwhelm. In flattery's poison- 
damp 
Truth's vestal torch and love's Promethean 

lamp — 
Not where the tools of tyrants bite the ground, 
'Mid broken swords, and steeds' ensanguined 

tramp. 
To add one gem to those that now surround 
Some pampered baby's brow — may trace of 
him be found. 

[126] 



IV 

The. star of day rolled on the radiant hours, 
And sank again behind the western steep; 
The dew of twilight bathed the closing flowers; 
The full-orbed moon, amid the empyreal 

deep. 
Restored the reign of silence and of sleep. 
Again Darassah seeks the moonlight shore. 
But comes not now in solitude to weep; 
He leads the maid his inmost thoughts 

adore. 
To tempt with him the stream, and unknown 

scenes explore. 

V 

A bark is on the shore; the rippling wave 
With gentle murmur chafes against its sides. 
Shrinks not the maid that barrier-rock to 

brave. 
Whose jutting base the eddying river chides? 
Fear finds no place where mightier love 

presides. 
They press the bark; the waters gently 

flow; 
The light sail swells, the steady vessel glides; 
The favoring breeze still follows as they go; 
They pass the barrier-rock; they haste to 

weal or woe. 

[127] 



VI 

He holds the helm; beside him sits the maid; 
Her arms around her lover's form are twined; 
Her head upon her lover's breast is laid; 
Pressed to his heart, in tenderest rest reclined, 
Lulled by the symphony of wave and wind. 
To lonely isles and citron-groves she flies 
(By fancy's spell in fondest dreams enshrined), 
Where love, and health, and peaceful thoughts 

suffice. 
To renovate the bowers of earthly paradise. 



vn 

Less pure Darassah's thoughts; ambition's 

spell 
Has touched his soul, and dreams of power 

and fame. 
But feeble yet and vague; nor knew he well. 
Whence those disturbed imaginations came. 
That touched his breast with no benignant 

flame; 
No state too proud, no destiny too high 
For her he loved, his wildest thoughts could 

frame. 
What might not that mysterious ring supply, 
That now had given her love, and life, and 

liberty? 

[128] 



VIII 

But the calm elements — the placid moon — 
The stars that 'round her rolled in still array — 
The plaintive breeze — the stream's respon- 
sive tune — 
The rapid water's silver-eddying play, 
That tracked in lines of light their onward 

way; 
The solemn rocks, in massy shade that 

frowned, 
The groves, where light and darkness chequer- 
ing lay. 
Breathed on his mind the peace that reigned 

around, 
And checked each turbid thought that erst 
had entrance found. 

IX 

The nightingale sang sweetly in the shade; 
The dewy rose breathed fragrance on the air; 
Who now more blest than that fond youth 

and maid. 
Whom the swift waters of Araxes bear. 
One common lot, or good or ill, to share? 
If ill — light falls the shaft of adverse fate. 
When mutual love assuages mutual care; 
If good — can bliss the feeling mind await. 
Unless one tender heart its joys participate? 

[129] 



So thought Kelasris, wrapped in dreams of 

hope, 
Nor deemed how soon, in time's delusive reign, 
The brightest tints of youthful fancy's scope 
Fade in the vast reality of pain. 
That speaks the omnipotence of Ahrimane. 
But while the light bark glided fast and free. 
And not a cloud 'obscured the ethereal plain, 
The gale — the stream — the night-bird's 

melody — 
Touched in her soul the chords of tender 

harmony. 

XI 

The stars grow pale, and o'er the western 

verge 
Of heaven the moon her parting orb suspends. 
She sinks behind the hill. The eddying surge 
Reflects the deepening blush that morning 

lends 
To eastern mountain's top, where softly 

blends 
Its misty outline with the reddening sky. 
Tow'rd heaven's high arch the lark exulting 

tends; 
Lost in the depth, invisible on high. 
He makes the rocks resound with his sweet 

minstrelsy. 

[ 130] 



XII 

The sun comes forth upon the mountain-top; 

The dewy flowers unclose and every drop 
Light trembling on the leaf — the moss — 

the spray — 
Beams like a diamond in the streams of day; 

The scattered mist flies far, to heaven up- 
borne, 

Like earth's glad incense to the shrine of 
morn. 

XIII 

The bark glides swiftly on; new scenes expand 



The light acacia blooms along the strand; 
Deep groves of pine, where laurels wave 

between, 
Rear their dark tufts of everlasting green; 



Now the vast oak o'er-canopies their way. 
And now the beetling crag, with sapless 
lichens gray. 

[131] 



XIV 

Far on the left the lessening rocks recede; 
A plain extends, a wide luxuriant plain; 
One fair expanse of grove and flowery mead 
And field, wide-waving with unripened grain; 
Of industry and peace the blest domain ! 
The tinkling sheep-bell gave a pleasant sound; 
And youths and maids were there, a cheerful 

train, 
And rosy children gambolled on the ground. 
Where peeped the cottage forth from many a 

sylvan mound. 

[Here the verses end. The resemblance to Shel- 
ley's Alastor will be seen at once in the spirit 
of the poem; while the verse is a more prosaic 
form of Shelley's Spenserian stanza in The Re- 
volt of Islam. The mutual influence of the two 
friends upon each other in their composition is 
very evident. — F. B. S.] 



ANOTHER ARGUMENT 

[Which continues the fragmentary verse.] 

Canto 1st. — The island. The Genius 
Aretina. 

Canto 2nd. — The voyage down the river. 
An extensive and cultivated plain on the left 
— a cave surrounded with fruit trees and 
[ 132] 



embosomed among rocks, on the right. The 
lovers rest in this cave. Looking on the 
plain opposite they think of Oromazes. A 
violent storm comes on. The river swells 
and inundates the opposite plain. The boat 
is carried away by the torrent. The cottages, 
vineyards and fields are overwhelmed. 

Canto ^rd. — The Genius Aretina directs 
them to proceed on foot to a city on the shore 
of the Caspian Sea. They arrive there. The 
miseries of a city are depicted. While they 
are making their observation the Sultan 
passes and sees Kelasris, whom he afterwards 
forcibly takes from her lover, and shuts up 
in his seraglio. Darassah resists and is im- 
prisoned. Prison described. He is on the 
point of destroying himself, but the Genius 
appears, sets him at liberty, and directs him 
to proceed to the desert. 

Canto 4th. — He arrives at an oasis, 
inhabited by an old philosopher and his 
daughter. The philosopher -delivers his 
opinion on the past and future condition of 
the human race. The next morning the phi- 
losopher is found dead. Darassah consoles 
the girl. She loves him. He feels unwilling 
to leave her. By degrees he loves her and 
for a time forgets Kelasris. He lives with 
his new love in the oasis. 

Canto ^th. — One day he walks alone to 

[ 133 ] 



the farther extremity of the oasis. He sees 
a caravan at a distance. It approaches. A 
shower of sand rises. It buries the caravan. 
It rolls to the oasis and buries the greater 
part of It, together with his new love. In his 
agony the Genius appears, tells him it was not 
hither she directed him, and gives him in- 
structions to proceed. 

Canto 6th. — He falls in with a tribe of 
wandering robbers. He harangues them and 
holds out the temptation of splendid plunder. 
They make him their chief. He leads them to 
the city In which Kelasrls had been taken 
from him. His spells unclose the gates. They 
sack the city and set it on fire. He kills the 
Sultan with his own hand. He can discover 
no trace of Kelasrls. He is made Sultan. 

Canto Jth. — He discovers the tomb of 
Kelasrls in the garden of the seraglio. He 
becomes miserable and by degrees tyrannical. 
Famine and pestilence assail the city. He 
consults the oracle and is ordered to attack an 
unoffending nation on the north shore of the 
Caspian, and build a temple there to Ahrl- 
manes under the name of Havohje.-^ 

Canto Sth. — He fits out a fleet and sets 

sail. The beauty of a sunset at sea softens 

his heart; he thinks of the days of his youth, 

of the simple rites of Oromaze and the Inno- 

* Evidently an anagram of Jehovah. — R. G. 

[134] 



cent love of Kelasris. He shrinks from the 
accomplishment of his present object. A 
storm comes on and scatters his fleet. He is 
wrecked, and preserved by a simple people 
dwelling near the sea-shore, a variety of the 
Lotophagi. He is pleased with their mode of 
life, finds a third love, and is becoming [calm] 
and happy, when their country is destroyed 
by a volcanic eruption and an earthquake. 

Canto gth. — Flying, he meets the Genius 
who leads him to his army, which she had 
saved and collected. He obeys her orders 
and conquers the country he was directed to 
attack. Finds a diamond mine and a gold 
mine and compels the conquered people to 
work them. Entering the diamond mine he 
sees the Genius of it, who addresses him. 

Canto loth. — He builds a temple to Ahri- 
manes and orders all persons to worship in it. 
One girl disobeys. She is brought before him 
and he falls in love. Finding her deaf to his 
persuasions he shuts her up in his palace. 

Canto nth. — His captive escapes he knows 
not how. He orders diligent search to be 
made for her. He joins the pursuit himself. 
He enters a deep forest. He loses his attend- 
ants. It is the season of autumn. At length 
he discovers her alone, reclining under a 
tree. He approaches her. She reasons with 
him. He attempts to seize her. She flies. 

[135] 



A temple appears in view in which she seeks 
an asylum. 

Canto i2th. — The high priest of Oromazes 
makes his appearance. The young female ap- 
peals to his protection, which he promises. 
Darassah addresses him and tells him he is 
the Sultan and the conqueror of that country. 
The priest says he cannot oppose God's vice- 
gerent on earth, and is about to deliver up the 
fugitive, when she manifests herself to be one 
of the genii of Oromazes, who, in considera- 
tion of their ancient love of mankind, had 
still lingered on the earth; but who will 
henceforth, disgusted at its total wickedness 
and corruption, abandon it to Ahrimanes. 
But before she goes she will execute an act 
of justice by destroying the temple and 
the priests. She destroys the temple, but 
the Genius Aretina interposes and saves the 
priest, saying that priests and kings are the 
peculiar objects of the care of Ahrimanes, 
and that while they serve him faithfully they 
shall be safe. The other genius replies by 
foretelling the period of the return of the 
reign of Oromazes. The Genius Aretina exults 
in the penal dominion of Ahrimanes. 



[136] 



THE POETRY OF PEACOCK 

By F. B. Sanborn 

Concerning the rank and merits of Peacock 
as a poet there have been widely varying 
estimates. Perhaps that of Mr. Saintsbury 
in the preface to his edition of Rhododaphne in 
1897, is, on the whole, the best. He said, — 

This poem has never been popular, but is a very 
interesting example of that section of the Ro- 
mantic poetry of the first quarter of the nine- 
teenth century which was written by men who 
were not, first of all, poets. In this section "Rhodo- 
daphne" takes very high rank. Peacock's scholar- 
ship, in which he was far superior to all his great 
poetical contemporaries, including even Coleridge 
so far as exactness is concerned, may have "sick- 
lied o'er" his poetical vein; his eighteenth century 
pecuUarities also appear. But it is an immense 
advance on his only other long poem, "The Genius 
of the Thames," published six years earlier; and 
we see in it the great contagion of Shelley, in whose 
company at Marlow, Peacock in 18 17 had been 
living. Rhododaphne is exactly contemporary 
with Nightmare Abbey, which Shelley in a very 
different way had also inspired. Observe how en- 
tirely the note of persiflage is kept out of the poem, 
— how omnipresent it is in the novel. 

[137] 



No publication was made of Shelley's 
critique in 1817 of Rhododaphne , but he 
thought more highly than Saintsbury of the 
two earlier poems {Genius of the Thames and 
Palmyra), as appears by his letter to Peacock's 
publisher in August, 18 12, in which he said, — 

I shall take the liberty of retaining Mr. Pea- 
cock's two poems. They abound with a genius, 
and information, the power and extent of which I 
admire, In proportion as I lament the object of 
their application. Mr. Peacock conceives that 
commerce Is prosperity; that the glory of the 
British flag Is the happiness of the British people; 
that George III, so far from having been a warrior 
and a tyrant, has been a patriot. To me It ap- 
pears otherwise, and I have accustomed myself 
not to be seduced by the liveliest eloquence, or 
the sweetest strains; to regard with Intellectual 
toleration that which ought not to be tolerated 
by those who love liberty, truth and virtue. I 
mean not to say that Mr. Peacock does not love 
them; but he regards those means Instrumental 
to their progress, which I regard Instrumental to 
their destruction. (See "Genius of the Thames," 
pp. 24, 26, 28, 76, 98.) At the same time, the 
poem appears to be far beyond mediocrity in 
genius and versification, and the conclusion of 
"Palmyra" the finest piece of poetry I ever read. 
Of course I am only half acquainted with that 
genius and those powers, whose application I 
should consider myself rash and Impertinent In 
criticising, did I not conceive that frankness and 
justice demand it. 

[138] 



This letter speaks more for young Shelley's 
courtesy and moral sense than for his critical 
talent, which at the age of twenty was not 
well ripened, as we see by his own verse and 
prose In 1 812. 

But when he came to know Peacock, he 
found so much sympathy in his own revolt 
against the English conventionalities that 
they formed a close friendship, which in- 
fluenced favorably the writings of both. Pea- 
cock inspired Shelley with his own love of 
Greek and Latin, and gave him that sense of 
the ludicrous which, except in a crude form, 
was almost unknown to the youthful poet. 
Shelley in turn inspired in Peacock something 
of his own strong love for the marvellous and 
the magical, so little akin to his friend's 
lighter and more sensible turn of mind. 
The fragment of Ahrimanes has a singular 
likeness and unlikeness to Shelley's Alastor 
and Revolt of Islam ; and though Shelley 
had a power of constructiveness which was 
denied to Peacock, who could hardly ever 
frame a coherent plot; yet those flashes of 
fancy and wit so native to Peacock, with a 
fundamental pessimism which he had, even 
in youth, seem to have set the deeper imagi- 
nation of Shelley working most fruitfully. 
The tiresomeness observed in the earlier long 
poems of Shelley would doubtless have been 
[ 139] 



more noticeable, but for the light stimula- 
tion of Peacock; while his deeper sense of 
the wrong in the world held Shelley down 
from some of those enthusiastic flights that 
were too often but Icarus-downfalls in his 
youthful career. With all his levity, Peacock 
had that English religion which consisted, 
according to Emerson, in the belief that 
"God will not treat with levity a pound ster- 
ling." This difference of view, which in later 
years might have broken off his friendship 
with Shelley, only made Peacock the more 
attracted and serviceable to the generous 
poet. Shelley's early death kept the chain of 
friendship bright, although Peacock in later 
years took a more severe view of some of his 
friend's actions than he seems to have held at 
the time they occurred. 

The gift of Peacock was for lyric verse, — 
and this he shared with Shelley, but in a 
wholly different manner. Seriousness — even 
melancholy — is apt to mark Shelley's lyrics; 
while Peacock's are of a gaiety without 
coarseness, less frequently found in English 
poesy than in the continental languages. 
This quality hardly appears in Ahrimanes, 
and it is perhaps the reason why Peacock 
could never finish it; his genius being only 
momentarily, or by way of satire, directed to 
those woes of life which his argument required 
[ 140] 



him to put forward and denounce. In poetry 
he was of a Greek or French type, rather than 
of that mood which best befits an English 
moralist; for most of the poets of that lan- 
guage are moralists, as the Latin poets were. 

Of Rhododaphne, when it appeared in 1817, 
Shelley said it was like "a voice heard from 
some Pythian cavern in the solitudes where 
Delphi stood" — [I have been in those soli- 
tudes, and heard no such voice.] "We are 
transported," he added, "to the banks of the 
Peneus, and linger under the crags of Tempe, 
and see the water-lilies floating on the stream" 
— [I was there, too, and bathed in the muddy 
and swift Peneus, but saw no water-lilies, 
though plenty of crocuses, in the pass above 
the river, — for it was in March, 1893.] "We 
are with Plato by old Ilissus, under the sacred 
Plane-tree, among the sweet scent of flower- 
ing sallows; and above, there is the nightin- 
gale of Sophocles, in the ivy of the pine, 
watching the sunset so that it may dare to 
sing." 

THE FRAGMENTS OF NOVELS 
(Preface by Doctor Richard Garnett) 

Besides Peter of Provence, which his cousin 
Harriet Love understood him to say he had 
completed, — but of which only one faint 
[HI] 



and dubious vestige remains, — Peacock com- 
menced five romances which he left unfinished. 
One of these, Calidore, belongs to an early- 
period; three others, Boosahout Abbey, Cots- 
wold Chace, and Julia Procula, are among his 
last productions. The present editor, who 
for the first time published a portion of Cali- 
dore in his collective edition of Peacock's 
writings, then thought that it had imme- 
diately succeeded Melincourt, which would 
give a date of 1 8 17-18. He is now inclined to 
consider it prior to Melincourt, and to date it 
in 1815-16. The question does not admit of 
conclusive decision, nor is it of much impor- 
tance. Calidore belongs to the author's period 
of adolescent vigour, but is deficient in the 
urbanity which he subsequently attained by 
commerce with the world. The observation 
that the Vicar had not seen a gold coin for 
twenty years (1797 being the year of the Bank 
of England's suspension of cash payments) 
shows that the date cannot be very remote 
from 1 8 17, and paper and handwriting sup- 
port the same conclusion. It cannot be later 
than 1 8 17, since early in 18 18 Peacock is 
known to have been engaged on Nightmare 
Abbey. On the whole, 18 16 seems the most 
probable date. 

Calidore is an instance of a phenomenon not 
infrequent in imaginative composition, the 

[142] 



Inadequacy of a ground-idea, excellent in 
itself, to support the superstructure sought 
to be erected upon it. The visit of the Ar- 
thurian prince to Britain, in quest of a wife 
and a philosopher, is an admirable notion, 
but only for a short story or for an unbridled 
extravaganza. So long as the action passes 
among medieval or mythological person- 
ages all is well, but the introduction of the 
Arthurian stranger to the society of the 
nineteenth century creates such violent im- 
probabilities that the author might well 
despair of bringing his story to a satisfactory 
conclusion. This was probably the reason 
for its discontinuance, for the story is through- 
out written con amore. The editor has else- 
where pointed out its affinity to Heine's Gods 
in Exile; and it may be added that the 
princely toper Seithenyn, and the charming 
Anghared of The Misfortunes of Elphin seem 
prefigured in the drunken Welsh parson and 
his exemplary daughter. 

The recovery of a missing portion of the 
MS. allows Calidore now to be considerably 
extended ; but it still remains a mere fragment. 

The other fragmentary tales, Boosahout 
Abbey, Cotswold Chace, Julia Procula, and the 
unnamed fragments, are of much less compass 
than Calidore^ but more highly finished, being, 
so far as they go, polished to the uttermost in 

[143] 



diction, and perfectly ready for publication. 
The character of the handwriting and of the 
paper shows three of them to belong to a late 
period of the author's life. They were prob- 
ably written between his retirement from the 
India House in March, 1856, and 1859, when 
he must have been fully occupied with Gryll 
Grange, the last of his novels, of which Cots- 
wold Chace seems to offer some adumbration. 
The story is attractive as far as it goes ; but the 
author probably found it an insuperable diffi- 
culty to devise any plausible means of bring- 
ing his fair recluse upon the scene. Those 
usually resorted to by novelists in like cases 
must have appeared hackneyed and conven- 
tional. Even had this difficulty been sur- 
mounted, the continuation of the novel would 
have presented great obstacles to a writer of 
Peacock's peculiar vein. Miss Dorimer is a 
commanding figure, and must evidently domi- 
nate the story. But the Peacockian novel, 
when the scene is laid in modern times, re- 
quires a crowd of eccentric persons, in per- 
sonation of particular crotchets. Provision 
has indeed been made for such an assemblage, 
but amid its various humours the heroine 
must have been effaced. 

The title Boosahout Abbey savours of bac- 
chanalian comedy, but so far as the tale has 
proceeded, it is one of the most serious of Pea- 
[144] 



cock's novels. The reflections of Friar John 
with which it opens are fine and strikingly 
just, and the general course of the conversa- 
tion between him and the Abbot seems to 
tend towards a plot of tragic interest. Pea- 
cock may well have felt that such a situation 
was likely to grow beyond his management. 

For the plot of Julia Procula, Peacock is 
indebted to an old Latin play, which he had 
himself been the means of introducing to 
English literature. The first of his Horae 
Dramaticae, published in "Fraser's Maga- 
zine," is devoted to the Querolus, a Latin 
comedy probably of the fourth Christian cen- 
tury. The subject of the Querolus, which de- 
rives its name from the principal character, 
is the guardianship exercised over him by his 
Lar familiaris, or household deity. The Lar, 
provoked into activity by his complaints, en- 
riches him in spite of himself by the revela- 
tion of a buried treasure. This novel would 
have followed substantially the same lines, 
but Proculus, the exponent of the author's 
own philosophy, could not have been repre- 
sented so easy a prey as Querolus to knavish 
impostors; and the action would have been 
enriched by the introduction of his daughter 
and her lover, — an interesting, but, until 
the Lar's intervention, an impecunious pair. 
This intervention would also have conciliated 

[145] 



the opposition of the swain's father, Cams 
Atlllus, who would have opened his heart as 
soon as he found It needless to open his purse. 
We have here all the elements of a charming 
little comedy, provided only that means could 
be found to account for the existence and 
concealment of the treasure, and to keep up 
suspense for awhile respecting Its destination; 
the machinery of the Latin play not being 
applicable. 

These productions of a septuagenarian 
writer are almost Inevitably deficient in the 
racy humour and masculine vigor of his 
zenith of literary power; but there is no de- 
cline In the "lightness, chastity, and strength 
of language" which, fifty years before, Shelley 
"knew not how to praise sufficiently." 

The fragment of an unnamed story follow- 
ing Julia Procula, which we have ventured 
to entitle The Lord of the Hills, is perhaps the 
most Interesting of any. It is the only one 
of Peacock's fictions of which the scene is 
laid In a foreign country; and, although he 
frequently introduces a ghost story with evi- 
dent relish, this Is his only tale based upon 
the supernatural. The original MS. Is In 
pencil, seeming to Indicate a first draft, but 
there Is little alteration. Nothing can be 
more easy and masterly than the progress of 
the story up to the point where, without any 
[146] 



preliminary warning, Pegasus suddenly lays 
back his ears, furls his pinions and refuses to 
move another yard. The author had probably 
discovered that his original scheme for con- 
tinuation would not answer, and was unable 
to devise another. There is no internal evi- 
dence of date, but the water-mark on the 
paper is 1833. In July, 1836, Peacock be- 
came Chief Examiner at the India House, 
and the addition to his cares and responsi- 
bilities would probably disincline him to un- 
dertake any fresh work of fiction. The 
composition of the fragment, therefore, may 
perhaps be placed in 1836, or possibly 
1835. 



[147] 



CALIDORE 



CALIDORE 

Notwithstanding the great improvements 
of machinery in this rapidly improving age, 
which is so much wiser, better, and happier 
than all that went before it, every gentleman 
is not yet accommodated with the conve- 
nience of a pocket-boat. We may therefore 
readily imagine that Miss Ap-Nanny and her 
sister Ellen, the daughters of the Vicar of 
Llanglasrhyd, were not a little astonished, in 
a Sunday evening walk on the sea shore, when 
a little skiff, which, by the rapidity of its mo- 
tion, had attracted their attention while but 
a speck upon the waves, ran upon the beach; 
from which emerged a very handsome young 
gentleman, dressed not exactly in the newest 
fashion, who, after taking down the sail and 
hauling up the boat upon the beach, carefully 
folded it up in the size of a prayer-book, and 
transferred it to his pocket. After which he 
turned himself to the sea, and, scooping up 
some water in the hollow of his hand, poured 
it down again in the manner of a libation; 
calling on the names of Neptune and Jupiter 

[151] 



and Proteus and Triton and the Nereids. 
Then turning towards the rocks he spread 
open his arms and invoked the Nymphs, the 
mountains, the rivers, the lakes, the fields, 
the springs, the woods, and the sea shore, by 
their several appellations of Oreads, and 
Naiads, and Limniads, and Limoniads and 
Ephydriads, and Dryads and Hamadryads. 
He did not notice the young ladies till he had 
completed this operation; and when he looked 
round and discovered them, he seemed a little 
confused, but made them a very courteous 
bow in a fine but rather singular style of an- 
cient politeness. From the moment of his 
first landing, and the commencement of the 
curious process of folding up his boat. Miss 
Ap-Nanny had been dying with curiosity, 
and had consulted her sister Ellen as to the 
propriety of addressing the stranger; having, 
however, fully made up her mind beforehand 
as usual with young ladies when they ask 
advice. 

The stranger spared Ellen the trouble of 
giving her opinion by advancing and politely 
enquiring if there were any such thing as a 
town or inn in the neighbourhood? these 
being things, he said, for which he was in- 
structed to enquire. Miss Ap-Nanny in- 
formed him, in fifty times as many words as 
were necessary, that there was no town 

[152] 



within many miles, but a very good inn for 
the accommodation of picturesque tourists, 
kept by a very polite well-behaved accommo- 
dating old woman, named Gwyneth Owen, 
whose poor, dear husband was gone to Abra- 
harii's bosom. "I hope he will not stay there 
long," said the stranger, touched apparently 
with sympathy by the rueful aspect with 
which Miss Ap-Nanny deemed it expedient 
to pronounce these latter words. The hawk's 
eyes of Miss Ap-Nanny distended with amaze- 
ment, but she proceeded to point out the 
way to the inn, observing at the same time: 
"You seem to be a stranger here, sir." "Per- 
fectly, sweet lady," was the reply, which left 
Miss Ap-Nanny's curiosity as unsatisfied as 
before, though her wide mouth was pursed 
up into a smile by the courteous appellative; 
for she was not esteemed a beauty in this sin- 
ful generation, though she had eyes like the 
fish-pools by the gate of Bath-rabbim, and a 
nose like the tower of Lebanon which looks 
towards Damascus. These prepossessing fea- 
tures, with the sub addition of two thin colour- 
less lips, like faded shreds of pink silk, set 
altogether in a complexion of smoky yellow, 
like the wood of the Barberry tree, over- 
shaded with inflexible masses of coarse copper- 
coloured hair, and mounted on a neck not 
perhaps very unlike the Tower which David 

[153] 



built for an armoury, formed altogether a 
combination of feminine charms that was 
doomed "to waste its sweetness on the desert 
air" among the tasteless squires of Cambria. 

"Your way to the inn," she pursued, "lies 
to the left of that rocky peak; where you will 
see a narrow path that will bring you into the 
public road, where you will first pass by the 
house of my papa, the vicar." This was said 
to give the stranger a notion of her conse- 
quence; but he astonished her again by ask- 
ing: "Pray, what is a vicar?" 

"A vicar, sir," said Miss Ap-Nanny, "Lord 
bless me! don't you know what a vicar is?" 

The stranger had too much politeness to 
press any further enquiry into a subject which 
the lady seemed either unable or unwilling to 
explain, as to what a vicar might be; and he 
diverted his attention to her companion. All 
the mild and modest simplicity of Cambrian 
beauty concentered its gentle graces in the 
beautiful Ellen. The soft light of her dark 
brown eyes indicated a rare and happy union 
of sprightliness and gentleness; her com- 
plexion, delicately fair, was tinged with the 
natural roses of juvenility and health; her 
black hair curled gracefully round her ivory 
temples, under the becoming Welsh costume 
of a black hat and feather; and her sym- 
metrical figure sustained no disadvantage 
[154] 



from the pressure of the sea breeze upon her 
drapery. 

Nature had gifted our youth with a very 
susceptible spirit; and the contemplation of 
this beautiful creature fanned the dormant 
sparks of his natural combustibility into an 
instantaneous conflagration. When we add 
to this that these were the first unmarried 
girls he had ever seen, it will not appear sur- 
prising that he with difficulty restrained him- 
self from falling at the feet of the lovely Ellen, 
and proffering himself to her acceptance as 
her true and devoted Knight; but calling to 
mind some prudent counsels that had been 
carefully engraven on the tablets of his 
memory, touching the Importance of time 
and place, he tore himself away with a very 
polite bow and an inarticulate valediction; 
and, following the directions of Miss Ap- 
Nanny, arrived at the hospitable doors of 
mine hostess Gwyneth Owen. 

The inn was filled with picturesque tourists 
who had arrived in various vehicles by the 
help of those noble quadrupeds who confer so 
much dignity on the insignificant biped, that 
if he venture to travel without them and rest 
his reception on his own merits the difference 
of his welcome may serve to show him how 
much more of his imaginary Importance be- 
longs to his horse than to himself. Our 

[155] 



traveller arriving alone and on foot was re- 
ceived with half a courtesy by the landlady, 
and shown into the common parlour where 
the incipient cold of the autumnal evening 
was dispelled by an immense turf fire, by 
which were sitting two elderly gentlemen of 
the clerical profession, recumbent in arm 
chairs, with their eyes half shut, and their legs 
stretched out so that the points of their shoes 
came in contact at the centre of the fender. 
Each was smoking his pipe with contempla- 
tive gravity. Neither spoke nor moved, ex- 
cept now and then as if by mechanism, to fill 
his glass from the jug of ale that stood be- 
tween them on the table, and the moment 
this good example was set by one the other 
followed it instantaneously and automatically 
as the two figures at St. Dunstan's strike upon 
the bell to the great delight of Cockneys, 
amazement of rustics, and consolation of 
pickpockets. The stranger made several at- 
tempts to draw them into conversation, but 
could not succeed in extracting more than a 
"hum" from either of them. At length one 
of the reverend gentlemen, having buzzed the 
jug, articulated, with slow and minute em- 
phasis: "Will you join in another jug?" 
"Hum!" said the other. A violent rattling 
of copper ensued in their respective coat 
pockets; two equal quantities of half-pence 

[156] 



were deliberately counted down upon the 
table; the bell was rung, and the little, round, 
Welsh waiting-maid carried out the money, 
and replenished the jug in silence. They 
went on as before till the liquor was exhausted, 
when it became the other's turn to ask the 
question, and the same eventful words, *'Will 
you join in another jug?" were repeated, 
with the same ceremonies and the same re- 
sults. Our traveller, in the meanwhile, looked 
over his tablets of instruction. These two 
reverend gentlemen were the Vicar of Llan- 
glasrhyd and the Rector of Bwlchpenbach. 
The rector performed afternoon service at a 
chapel twenty miles from his rectory, and 
Llanglasrhyd lying half-way between them, 
he slept every Sunday night under the roof of 
Gwyneth Owen, where his dearest friend, the 
Vicar of Llanglasrhyd, met him to smoke away 
the evening. They had thus passed together 
every Sunday evening for forty years, and 
during the whole period had scarcely said ten 
words to each other beyond the usual forms 
of meeting and parting, and "Will you join in 
another jug?" Yet were their meetings so 
interwoven with their habitual comforts that 
either would have regarded the loss of the 
other as the greatest earthly misfortune that 
could have befallen him, and would never, 
perhaps, have mustered sufficient firmness of 
[157] 



voice to address the same question, "Will you 
join in another jug?" to any other human 
being. It may seem singular to those who 
have heard the extensive form of Welsh hos- 
pitality that the vicar did not invite the rector 
to pass these evenings at his vicarage; but 
it must be remembered that the Rector of 
Bwlchpenbach was every week at Llanglasrhyd 
in the way of his business, and that the Vicar 
of Llanglasrhyd had no business whatever to 
take him on any single occasion to Bwlch- 
penbach; therefore the balance of the con- 
sumption of ale would have been entirely 
against the vicar, and as they regularly drank 
three quarts each at a sitting, or one hundred 
and fifty-six quarts in a year, the Rector of 
Bwlchpenbach would have consumed in forty 
years six thousand two hundred and forty 
quarts of ale, without equivalent or com- 
pensation, at the expense of the Vicar of 
Llanglasrhyd, a circumstance not to be 
thought of without vexation of spirit. 

Our traveller folded up his tablets, rung 
the bell, and inquired what he could have for 
supper, and what wine was to be had? The 
landlady entered with a tempting list of arti- 
cles, and enumerated several names of wine. 
The stranger seemed perplexed, and at length 
said he would have them all, for he liked to 
see a well-covered table, having always been 

[158] 



used to one. The landlady dropped a double 
courtesy, and the reverend gentlemen dropped 
their pipes; the pipes broke, and the odorous 
embers were scattered on the hearth. 

When the supper smoked, and the wine 
sparkled on the table, the stranger pressed 
the reverend gentlemen to join him. They 
did not indeed require much pressing, and 
assisted with great industry in the demolition 
of his abundant banquet: but still not a 
syllable could he extract from either of them 
except that the Vicar of Llanglasrhyd, when 
his heart was warmed with Madeira, invited 
the rector and the young stranger to breakfast 
with him the next morning at the vicarage, 
which the latter joyfully accepted, as he very 
well by this time understood that his lively 
and jovial companion was the father of the 
beautiful creature who had charmed him on 
the sea shore. He sate from this time in 
contented silence, contemplating the happy 
meeting of the following morning while the 
reverend gentlemen sipped the liquid so far and 
only till with their usual felicitous sympathy 
they vanished at the same instant under the 
table. The landlady and her household were 
summoned to their assistance. The Vicar of 
Llanglasrhyd was carried home by the postil- 
ions, and the Rector of Bwlchpenbach was 
put to bed by the ostler. 

[159] 



CHAPTER II 

Our youth was not unmindful of his en- 
gagement, and rising betimes, sent up his 
compliments to the Vicar of Bwlchpenbach 
to know if he was ready to accompany him to 
the vicarage. The ostler, by dint of knocking 
at the door and shouting "Ho! Ho! Ho! 
your reverence!" succeeded in waking the re- 
luctant rector, and in extracting a response 
very oracular in its brevity, the purport of 
which was that he was too queasy to rise. 
The stranger therefore proceeded to the 
vicarage without him, where he found the 
lovely Ellen in the parlour alone, to whom he 
found himself under the awkward necessity 
of explaining that he came to breakfast by 
the vicar's invitation; for the vicar had been 
carried home in a state of profound sleep and 
had continued in the same state sans inter- 
mission; so that his family naturally remained 
in complete ignorance of his appointment. 
Ellen ran upstairs and knocked at her father's 
door to announce the stranger's arrival; but 
the vicar sympathised in queasiness with his 
friend the rector, and murmured an injunc- 
tion to his daughters to do the honours of the 
house. Miss Ap-Nanny, hearing her sister's 
communication, skipped down stairs by three 
[i6o] 



steps at a time, determined not to let the 
stranger escape again without gratifying her 
curiosity about himself and his boat. Mrs. 
Ap-Nanny, a grave and solemn matron, as 
silent as her husband, next made her appear- 
ance, and the beautiful hands of Ellen pre- 
pared the tea. "Ellen, my dear," said Miss 
Ap-Nanny, "perhaps Mr. I beg the gen- 
tleman's pardon, I have not the pleasure of 
knowing his name." "My name," said the 
stranger, "is Calidore." "A foreign name, I 
presume," said Miss Ap-Nanny. "Probably," 
said the stranger. "But, dear me, sir, surely 
you must know something about your own 
name!" "Certainly," said Calidore, stealing 
glances all the while at Ellen, and perfectly 
distrait. "Allow me to hand you some toast: 
you must have had a very pleasant sail yester- 
day." "Very pleasant!" "Did you come 
far?" "Very far." "From Ireland perhaps." 
"Not from Ireland." "Then you must have 
come a long way in such a small boat, such a 
very small boat." "Not so very small: it is 
one of our best sea boats." "Do you carry 
your best sea boats in your waistcoat pockets ? 
Then I suppose in your great-coat pockets 
you carry your ships of the line! But, dear 
me, sir, you must come from a very strange 
place." "I come from a part of the world 
which is known to the rest by the name of 
[i6i] 



Terra Incognita. I am not at liberty to say- 
more concerning it." "But, sir, if it is a fair 
question, what has brought you to Wales?" 
"I have landed on this shore by accident. 
My present destination is London. I am to 
remain in this island twelve months, and re- 
turn with a wife and a philosopher." "God 
bless me! what can Terra Incognita want 
with a philosopher, and how are you to take 
them away ? " " In the same boat that brought 
me." "Why, who do you think will trust her- 
self? You would like some more tea? Ellen, 
my dear, do you think any lady would trust 
herself?" "If she had love enough," said 
Ellen. "Cream and sugar," said Miss Ap- 
Nanny. "The boat is perfectly safe," said 
the stranger, looking at Ellen. "I could go 
through a hurricane with it." "Love, to be 
sure, will do anything," said Miss Ap-Nanny, 
"but. Lord bless me! I may take an egg, 
and to be sure it would be worth some risk 
just in the way of curiosity to see Terra In- 
cognita. They must be very strange people, 
but what they can want of a philosopher I 
cannot imagine. I hope if you bring him this 
way you will keep him muzzled, for my papa 
says they are very terrible monsters, fiends of 
darkness and imps of the devil. I would not 
trust myself in a boat with one for the world. 
Would you, Ellen, my dear?" "I should not 
[162] 



be much afraid," said Ellen, smiling, "if he 
were in the hands of a safe keeper." "We 
have a philosopher or two among us already," 
said the stranger, "and they are by no means 
such formidable animals as you seem to sup- 
pose." "But my papa says so," said Miss 
Ap-Nanny. "I bow acquiescence," said the 
stranger, "but perhaps the Welsh variety is 
a peculiarly fierce breed." "I am happy to 
say there is not one in all Wales," said Miss 
Ap-Nanny. "I hear they run tame in Lon- 
don," said Ellen. "Then you are not so much 
afraid of them as your sister," said the 
stranger. "Not quite," said Ellen, smiHng 
again, "I think I would venture into the same 
room with one even if he were not in an iron 
cage." "Oh, fie, Ellen," said Miss Ap-Nanny, 
"that is what you call having liberal opinions. 
I cannot imagine where you got them. I am 
sure you did not learn them from me. Do you 
know, sir, Ellen is very heterodox. My papa 
actually detected her in the fact of reading 
a wicked book called 'Principles of Moral 
Science,' which, with his usual sweet temper, 
he put, without saying a word, behind the 
fire. He says liberal opinions are only an- 
other name for impiety." " Dear, good man ! " 
said Mrs. Ap-Nanny, opening her mouth for 
the first time, "he never was guilty of a liberal 
opinion in the course of his life." 

[163] 



Mrs. Ap-Nanny left the room shortly after 
breakfast to superintend the affairs of the 
household; and Miss Ap-Nanny, who was her 
secretary of state for the culinary department, 
was called out to assist in consultation whether 
leek-porridge or buttered ale should be ad- 
ministered to the queasy vicar; for, though 
the old gentleman preferred the latter, Mrs. 
Ap-Nanny was of opinion that the former was 
more medicinal; and the vicar was one of 
that numerous class of Benedicts of whom 
their wives take so much care in their indis- 
positions, that they are never suifered to con- 
sult their own tastes in any of the essential 
practice of the science of dietetics. On this 
occasion, however, the vicar was roused to 
exertion, and was so Athanasian in his invec- 
tives against the leek-porridge, and so Jere- 
mitaylorically pathetic in his entreaties for 
the buttered ale, that the heart of Mrs. Ap- 
Nanny was softened, and the ale was prepared 
accordingly. 

Whether it was owing to the exertion he 
had used in obtaining the ale, or to the ale 
itself, or to both in conjunction, we are not 
prepared to say, but the vicar found himself 
suddenly better, rose, dressed and descended. 
Opening the parlour door, he recoiled several 
paces in amazement to see the stranger on 
his knees before his daughter Ellen, in the 

[164] 



act of making passionate love, and Ellen, in 
the simplicity of her heart, listening to him 
with interested if not delighted attention! 
"Heyday!" exclaimed the vicar, who was 
destined this morning to exert his energies 
more than he had done for twenty years; 
"Why, what on earth? — Is this your return 
for my old Welsh hospitality? To begin by 
seducing my daughter, the staff of my life, 
now that I am stricken in years?" "I assure 
you, sir," said Calldore, "I have none but 
the most honourable motives." "How can 
that be, sir, when you never saw her before 
this morning?" "Indeed, sir, I beg your 
pardon. I saw her yesterday." "Oho! then 
you came here by appointment, and this was 
a scheme between you to lay a trap for my 
sobriety, and make me an accomplice. And 
now I recollect, I do not recollect that I gave 
you an Invitation, as you want to make me 
believe I did." "Nay, sir, your friend the 
rector can witness it." "Sir, what can a 
young man of your figure — you look like 
a courtier — mean by making love at first 
sight to my daughter? What can you mean, 
sir? Perhaps you have heard that she will 
have a thousand pounds, and that may be 
a temptation." "Money," said the stranger, 
"is to me mere chaff," and, producing a 
bag from his pocket, and shaking it by one 

[165] 



corner, he scattered on the floor a profusion 
of gold. The Vicar, who had seen nothing 
but paper money for twenty years, was 
astonished at these yellow apparitions, and 
picking up one inspected it with great 
curiosity. On one side was the phenomenon 
of a crowned head with a handsome and in- 
telligent face, and the legend Arthurus Rex. 
On the reverse, a lion sleeping at Neptune's 
feet, and the legend Redibo. "Here is a 
foreign potentate," said the Reverend Dr. 
Ap-Nanny, "whom I never remember to 
have heard of. Pray, is he legitimate by the 
grace of God, or a blasphemous and seditious 
usurper whom the people have had the im- 
pudence to choose for themselves?" "He is 
very legitimate and has an older title than 
any other being in the world." "Then I 
reverence him," said the Vicar. "Old Au- 
thority, sir, old Authority, there is nothing 
like old Authority. But what do you want 
with my daughter?" "Candidly, sir," said 
the stranger, "I am on a quest for a wife, and 
am so far inspired by the grace of Venus, 
Cupid, and Juno, that I am willing my quest 
should end where it begins — here." "On a 
quest," exclaimed the Vicar, "Venus, Cupid, 
and Juno! Ah! I see how it is. Rich, 
humoured, and touched in the head. Pray, 
what do you mean by Juno?" "Juno Pro- 
[i66] 



nuba," said the stranger, "the goddess of 
marriage." "I see, sir, you are inclined to 
make a joke of both me and my daughter. 
Sir, I must tell you this is very unbecoming 
levity." "Mydearsir, I assure you — " "Sir, 
it is palpable. Would any man make a serious 
proposal to a man of my cloth for his daughter, 
and talk to him of the grace of Venus and 
Cupid and Juno Pronuba, the goddess of 
marriage?" "I swear to you, sir," said the 
stranger, earnestly, "by the sacred head of 
Pan." "Pan!" exclaimed the vicar. "Sir! 
this is most outrageous ! Ellen, my love, fetch 
me another mug of buttered ale, for my 
exertions exhaust me." 

Ellen disappeared, glad of the momentary 
relief, for she had been sitting in a state 
of extreme embarrassment, with her hands 
crossed on her lap, and her looks fixed on the 
carpet. The vicar threw himself into his 
great arm chair, and fanned himself with 
his handkerchief. The stranger stood silently 
watching the door for the re-appearance of 
Ellen, who shortly returned with the mug, 
which the vicar, taking, presented to the 
stranger, saying: — "Come, sir, my wrath, 
which is great, must not make me unmind- 
ful of old Welsh hospitality." Calidore took 
the mug, and sipped it to please the vicar, 
having first poured a small quantity of it 

[167] 



on the floor, saying: — "iX'qOt, Ba/cxe! ("Be 
propitious, Bacchus!") "Really, sir," said 
the vicar, after a copious draught, — "this is 
most monstrous and incomprehensible; I wax 
warm, sir, in wrath." The truth was that the 
vicar was really angry with the stranger's 
words and actions, but as often as he cast 
his eyes on the golden shower on the floor he 
felt his wrath suddenly mollified. But hav- 
ing broken the ice of his voice he went on 
like a general thaw, to the great amazement 
of Mrs. and Miss Ap-Nanny, who, hearing 
the unusual rimbombo of his guttur-nasal elo- 
quence, burst Into the room to ascertain what 
was the matter. "I declare," said Mrs. Ap- 
Nanny, "here is the floor covered with 
money." "I declare," said Miss Ap-Nanny, 
"here is papa in a passion." "I am so," said 
the vicar, "and with very orthodox reason. 
I am in a great and very exceeding passion. 
I found this young man in the act of seduc- 
ing Ellen." "My very dear papa — " said 
Ellen deprecatingly. "Oh! the monster!" 
said Miss Ap-Nanny. "Oh! horrid!" said 
Mrs. Ap-Nanny. "And with his gold, I sup- 
pose," said Miss Ap-Nanny. "Did he throw 
all the gold on the floor?" "Yes," said the 
vicar; " he threw everything on the floor. He 
threw himself on the floor; he threw his 
money on the floor; he threw my buttered 
[i68] 



ale on the floor — " "And greased the carpet, 
I protest!" screamed Mrs. Ap-Nanny. "And 
had the impudence to talk to me about Bac- 
chus," continued the vicar; "and called Pan 
to witness that he wanted to marry my 
daughter by the grace of Venus and Cupid, 
and Juno Pronuba, the goddess of marriage; 
which I think composes altogether the most 
atrocious outrage that was ever offered to a 
man of my cloth." "I am so inexperienced in 
the manners of this country," said Calidore, 
"that I did not know the greatest outrage 
one gentleman can offer to another is to pro- 
pose to marry his daughter. I should have 
acted with more circumspection if I had been 
aware of this fact." "Sir," said the vicar, 
"there is no such fact but in your own head, 
which seems to be a repository for everything 
that is nowhere else, and for nothing that is 
elsewhere. Sir, the vial of my wrath over- 
flows." "Jupiter!"— "Certainly," said Miss 
Ap-Nanny, "it is a most extraordinary pro- 
ceeding for a gentleman to land one evening 
on a strange coast, and begin the next morn- 
ing by making love to one of the first two 
pretty girls he sees. But Ellen knows better 
than to listen to such a flyaway offer, — don't 
you, Ellen, my dear?" Ellen was silent. 
"Why, bless me, the girl is bewitched. What 
have you done to her, you wicked wretch, to 

[169] 



bewitch her so completely in such a short 
space of time?" And combining this idea of 
Ellen's bewitchment with those of the gold 
and the pocket-boat, the conviction flashed 
upon her that the stranger was one who had 
sold himself to the devil; and unable in her 
panic to give utterance to the idea, she fell 
back in a chair kicking and screaming in a 
fit of violent hysterics. "Water! water!" 
cried the vicar, and in his hurry and alarm 
poured over her forehead the remainder of 
his buttered ale. 

Ellen slipped away in the confusion, sent 
in the servant with water, and made her 
escape into the garden. The stranger snatched 
his opportunity and pursued her, while Dr. 
and Mrs. Ap-Nanny were engrossed with the 
fainting spinster. After a short search among 
the thick shades of the garden, he found her 
by the banks of a little torrent that flung 
itself in rapid descent down a sloping hollow 
of rock. She was sitting on a rustic bench 
under a trellis wreathed with clematis, which 
she had planted and reared. He threw him- 
self at her feet. Ellen was exceedingly dis- 
composed. Her acquaintance with the youth 
of the other sex had been limited to the jolly 
squires and hunting parsons of Cambria, and 
a young and handsome stranger, kneeling at 
her feet, and breathing passionate love, made 
[170] 



a very dazzling impression on her inexperi- 
enced and susceptible mind. Calidore, on 
the other hand, who had come to England on 
a quest for a wife, had been prepared to fall 
in love at a moment's notice, and being thus 
prepared on both sides the ignition was easy 
and the combustion rapid. Ellen, however, 
could not feel perfectly convinced that she 
had really made so sudden a conquest; nor, 
if she had been so convinced, could she have 
supposed that a flame so lightly kindled 
would not be as easily destroyed. She there- 
fore, as usual on similar occasions, assured 
the enamoured youth that she had no other 
attachment; that if he were what he ap- 
peared to be she might in time feel kindly 
disposed towards him, but entreated him to 
take a little time to ascertain if his momentary 
partiality were likely to continue permanent; 
exhorted him to proceed to London, as that 
was his destination, and assured him that if 
he re-visited that part of Wales she should be 
happy to see him again. Calidore could not 
but acquiesce in the propriety of all she said; 
and, encouraged by these sweet words, and 
much sweeter looks, he tore himself away 
from the garden of the vicarage, returned to 
the inn, threw himself into a post-chaise, and 
set forward for the metropolis. We shall 
leave him to enjoy the music of hoofs and 

[171] 



wheels, while we give some account of his 
birth, parentage and education. 

CHAPTER III 

King Arthur, after the fatal battle in which 
so many of his knights perished, and he him- 
self was dangerously wounded by the traitor 
Mordred, was conveyed by the Ladies or 
Nymphs of the Waters on board a small 
vessel, which made from the land in the sight 
of Duke Lukyon of Gloster. Fatigue and ex- 
haustion overcame the pain of his wound, 
and he fell into a deep sleep. When he awoke, 
under the midnight moon, he found himself 
miraculously well. Merlin was standing by 
him on the deck with a small bottle. He had 
just poured a few drops from it upon King 
Arthur's wound, which had healed imme- 
diately. Looking round, the King found him- 
self in the midst of familiar faces. He recog- 
nised his dear Queen Guenevere, and her dear 
friend Sir Launcelot, and Sir Gamline and his 
lady, and Sir Gawaine and Sir Kay, and 
many other valiant and courteous Knights 
and ladies bright. And last and not least in 
love his butler Bedevere. "Honest Bede- 
vere," said King Arthur, "if there be anything 
in this vessel analogous to a buttery and a 
cellar, do thy office and let us eat and drink. 

[172] 



This Is a merry meeting Indeed, for I thought 
we were all dead." "The will of fate," said 
Merlin, "seconded by my art and this vital 
elixir, has wrought this effect. You must for- 
sake your kingdom for the present, but you 
shall return to It by-and-by with a numerous 
chivalry and reign glorious and victorious In 
Britain. Meanwhile we must live on a soli- 
tary island, on a sea hitherto unexplored, 
where we must enjoy ourselves as well as 
we can till the fated hour of your return." 
"Very well," said King Arthur; "and for 
the present, illuminate Bedevere with your 
art, to assist him in procuring us a supper, 
for none of us have eaten anything since 
we were killed." Merlin led the whole 
party to the cabin, where they feasted 
joyously till sunrise, and continued to live 
a very merry life during the whole of their 
voyage. 

When they approached the destined island 
they were delighted to perceive that its as- 
pect presented a most promising diversity of 
mountain, valley, and forest reposing in the 
sunshine of a delicious climate. Two very sin- 
gular persons were walking on the seashore; 
one in the appearance a young and handsome 
man with a crown of vine-leaves on his head; 
the other a wild and singular figure in a fine 
state of picturesque roughness with goat's 

[173] 



horns and feet and a laughing face. As the 
vessel fixed its keel in the shore and King Ar- 
thur and his party landed, the two strangers 
approached and inquired who they were, and 
whence they came? — "This," replied Merlin, 
*'is the great King Arthur; this is his fair 
queen, Guenevere: and I am the potent Mer- 
lin: these are the illustrious knights of the 
round table: and this Is the King's butler, 
Bedevere." "The butler," said the first stran- 
ger, "shall be welcome." "And so shall the 
ladies," said the second. "But as to the rest 
of you," pursued the first, "we must know 
you a little better before we accord you our 
permission to advance a step In this island. 
I am Bacchus." "And I," said the other, 
"am Pan." "So," said Sir Launcelot, "I find 
we have to contend with the evil powers." 
"If you mean us by that appellation," said 
Bacchus, "you will find us too strong for you. 
This island is the retreat of all the gods and 
goddesses, genii and nymphs, who formerly 
reigned in Olympus, and dwelt in the moun- 
tains and valleys of Greece and Italy. Though 
we had not much need of mankind, we had a 
great affection for them, and lived among 
them on good terms and in an interchange of 
kind offices. They regaled us with the odours 
of sacrifice, built us magnificent temples, and 
especially showed their piety by singing and 

[174] 



dancing, and being always social and cheerful, 
and full of pleasure and life, which is the most 
gratifying appearance that man can present 
to the gods. But after a certain time they 
began to change most lamentably for the 
worse. They discontinued their sacrifices; 
they broke our images, many of which we 
had sate for ourselves; they called us fright- 
ful and cacophonous names — Beelzebub and 
Amaimon and Astaroth: they plundered and 
demolished our temples, and built ugly struc- 
tures on their ruins, where, instead of dancing 
and rejoicing as they had been used to do, 
and delighting us with spectacles of human 
happiness, they were eternally sighing and 
groaning, and beating their breasts, and 
dropping their lower jaws, and turning up 
the whites of their eyes, and cursing each 
other and all mankind, and chaunting such 
dismal staves that we shut our eyes and ears, 
and, flying from our favourite terrestrial 
scenes, assembled in a body among the clouds 
of Olympus. Here we held a council as to 
what was to be done for the amendment of 
these perverted mortals; but Jupiter in- 
formed us that Necessity, his mistress, and 
that of the world, compelled him to acquiesce 
for a time in this condition of things; that 
mankind, who had never been good for a great 
deal, were now become so worthless, and 

[175] 



withal so disagreeable, that the wisest course 
we could adopt would be to leave them to 
themselves and retire to an undisturbed 
island for which he had stipulated with the 
Fates. Here, then, we are, and have been for 
ages. That mountain on which the white 
clouds are resting is now Mount Olympus, 
and there dwell Jupiter and the Olympian 
deities. In these forests and valleys reside 
Pan and Silenus, the Fauns and the Satyrs, 
and the small nymphs and genii. I divide 
my time between the two, for though my 
home Is Olympus, I have a most special friend- 
ship for Pan. Now I have only this to say, 
that if you come here to make frightful faces, 
chaunt long tunes, and curse each other 
through the nose, I give you fair warning to 
depart in peace: if not, we shall find no 
trouble in expelling you by force, as Jupiter 
will testify to you." 

Jupiter gave the required testification by a 
peal of thunder from Olympus. 

Merlin and King Arthur fell on their knees, 
and the rest of their party followed the ex- 
ample. "Great Bacchus and mighty Pan," 
said Merlin, "pity our ignorance and take us 
under your protection, for if you banish us 
from this happy shore, our vessel must 
wander over the seas for ever, like the Flying 
Dutchman that is to be, and we are very ill 

[176] 



victualled for such a navigation." "Speak," 
said Bacchus: — 

"Will you drink, and join with me 

In midnight feast and revelry 

And songs whose notes shall take their pace 

From an Olympic chariot race 

Till Echo from our social mirth 

Shall learn there still are souls on Earth 

And with her hundred tongues repeat 

The tale to Jove's own mountain seat?" 

"That will we," exclaimed King Arthur 
and Merlin. "That will we," shouted the 
Knights of the Round Table. "That will 
we," vociferated the butler, with a voice like 
the voice of three. "Speak," said Pan; 

"Will ye dance and bound with me 

At evening round the old oak tree. 

Or round the tall and tufted pine, 

With woodbine wreathed and eglantine. 

While Fauns shall pipe, and wood-nymphs sweet 

The cymbals clash, the timbrels beat; 

Knights and damsels, fair and free. 

Will ye join these sports with me.?" 

"That will we," exclaimed the ladles of 
King Arthur's court. "That will we," ex- 
claimed the King and the Knights and Merlin 
and the butler. "Rise, then," said Bacchus; 
"Rise, then," said Pan, courteously assisting 
the ladies. 

[177] 



Mercury came flying from the clouds on 
Olympus, and presently alighted among them. 
*'I come," said he, "to propose a treaty of 
holy alliance between the powers of Olympus 
and those of Fairy-Land. What says Merlin?" 
"It is my dearest wish," said Merlin. "Then 
stretch forth your hand." Merlin stretched 
forth his hand. Bacchus touched it with his 
thyrsus. A vessel simultaneously appeared in 
the offing, which landed Oberon and Titania, 
and the whole of the fairy court. Pan blew 
his horn, and a chorus of Fauns, Satyrs, 
Nymphs and Genii came dancing from the 
woods. Apollo and Venus came down from 
Olympus. The happy alliance was con- 
cluded immediately. Oberon raised on the 
spot a palace for King Arthur. Bacchus 
made a fountain of wine spring up on the hill, 
and gave it in charge to the butler Bedevere. 
Pan spread a sumptuous banquet, and the 
whole assembly of Gods, Nymphs, Genii, 
Fairies, Knights and Ladies, entered at once 
into the full spirit of festal harmony, feasting, 
singing and dancing till Iris came down to 
inform Apollo that the Hours were looking for 
him, as it was near the time of sunrise. 

It was the virtue of this island that Its In- 
habitants were exempt from age and mortal- 
ity; but they did not (as a great philosopher 
has conjectured that persons similarly cir- 

[178] 



cumstanced would do) "cease to propa- 
gate;" on the contrary the ladles deemed 
themselves bound in loyalty to raise an army 
for King Arthur, that when the time should 
come for him to revisit his kingdom, he should 
do so with glory and power. Merlin assum- 
ing, by means of a purely anticipated cogni- 
tion (as the transcendentalists express it) the 
figure of Mr. Malthus, made them an oration 
on the evils that might result from a too 
rapid increase of population, on an island 
where no one could die, and where they might 
possibly be under the necessity of remaining 
some ages; expatiating with great eloquence 
on the virtue of moral restraint; but his elo- 
quence was thrown away; les chose s allaient 
leur train, and one morning, being thrown 
Into 'a panic by the squeal of a new born child, 
Merlin called his flying chariot, and waited 
upon Jupiter to entreat his interference in 
checking the impending dangers of a super- 
abundant population. Jupiter consulted with 
Juno, and sent Mercury with a message to 
Necessity, the Queen of the World. On the 
return of Mercury, Jupiter assured Merlin 
that there should be only three children to 
a marriage, and that no marriage should take 
place before the parties were twenty years 
of age; and he might satisfy himself by an 
easy calculation that this judicious arrange- 
[179] 



ment would restrain the population of the 
island within the capacity of its produce, 
for a much longer period of ages than King 
Arthur and his followers were likely to in- 
habit it. 

Thus the islanders increased in numbers 
only by slow and regular production, and 
lived much the same kind of life as Pindar, 
in his tenth Pythian, ascribes to the Hyper- 
boreans ; — a life eternally diversified by songs 
and festal dances, the breathing of pipes and 
the resonance of lyres; and banquets of pro- 
tracted festivity, at which they bound their 
hair with golden laurel in honour of Apollo. 
Our islanders were less exclusive in their gar- 
lands, and forgot neither "the myrtle of 
Venus nor Bacchus's wine." Bacchus be- 
came so fond of them that he was almost a 
stranger in Olympus, and seldom lost sight 
of King Arthur; and in his turn the butler 
Bedevere seldom lost sight of Bacchus. 

But, as Ulysses grew weary in the island of 
Calypso, and cast a longing look towards the 
shores of Ithaca, so King Arthur often found 
himself much too comfortable where he was, 
and longed for the time to come when he 
should return to his kingdom, and flourish 
again his good sword Escalaber. It would 
sometimes happen, at long and rare intervals, 
that there was an odd male child; and as it 
[i8o] 



could not be expected that this unfortunate 
person should live without a wife, and be 
held up as a solitary shining example of the 
beauty of moral restraint, Merlin deemed it 
more prudent, when he arrived at the mar- 
riageable age, to provide him with a fairy 
boat, and send him, under restrictions of 
secrecy, to England, to choose a wife for him- 
self. On these occasions King Arthur en- 
joined him to examine accurately the state of 
the country, that he might judge from his 
report if there were a good opening for his 
return. Merlin took the same opportunity of 
procuring all remarkable philosophical books, 
that he might have an accurate view of the 
progress of human knowledge; and the ladies 
were always most unmerciful in their com- 
missions for trinkets and jewellery. To detail 
the results of all the expeditions would lead us 
too far from our present subject. On one oc- 
casion King Arthur was informed that Eng- 
land was at that time governed by a cowardly 
braggadocio, whom the barons had just pent 
up in a little island on the Thames, and were 
making him do and say just whatever they 
pleased. "They must treat Kings with more 
ceremony," said King Arthur, "before I trust 
myself among them." On another occasion 
he heard that peoples' faces had grown longer 
by an inch and a half; that they were always 
[i8i] 



psalm-singing and "seeking the Lord," and 
not finding Him so readily as they expected, 
had amused themselves en attendant with 
cutting off the King's head, and that a French 
wag had made this epigram on the occasion : — 

The English, in their way of managing things, 
Dock the tails of their horses, the heads of their 

kings; 
But the French, among whom more politeness 

prevails. 
Let their kings wear their heads and their horses 

their tails. 

"Very facetious indeed," said King Ar- 
thur, "but I have a great aversion to long 
faces, and have too much regard for my 
horse's tail to trust it among them at present." 
On another occasion he was told that the peo- 
ple had risen with one voice against the doc- 
trine of divine right; had turned out a legiti- 
mate fanatical Scotchman, and had imported 
a grave Dutchman, to whom, and his lawful 
heirs, they had made over themselves and all 
their posterity forever, and this they called 
a "glorious revolution." "I see," said King 
Arthur, "I must bestir myself, or my legiti- 
macy will stand but a poor chance." "Wait 
a little," said Merlin, "and you will see the 
doctrine of divine right rise from its ashes 
like a plump Phoenix, and fatten itself on the 

[182] 



food and treasure of England, to the great 
delight and glory of the nation." 

Many years now passed by without an 
odd male child; and they would have re- 
mained in total ignorance of what was pass- 
ing in the old world but for an accident which 
never before had happened on these shores. 
King Arthur and his Knights and Ladies were 
leading the midnight revelry, in company 
with Bacchus and Pan in the royal palace, 
careless of the roar of the midnight storm; 
when the butler Bedevere entered and in- 
formed them that a vessel had been cast away 
on the shore, and that only one person had 
escaped, who was soliciting shelter and re- 
freshment. "Refresh him," said King Ar- 
thur, "then bring him in and let us see him." 
"I will soon set him to rights," said Bacchus. 
All eyes were fixed on the door, and when 
Bedevere opened it the whole party recoiled 
in surprise and alarm from the strange ap- 
parition that entered. A thin figure, in a close 
suit of black, which stuck to him the closer 
from being wet through with salt water; a 
face artificially stretched into preposterous 
elongation; eyes of which little more than 
the whites were visible; long straight hair 
that hung like ends of black rope on each side 
of a hollow and saffron-coloured face, com- 
pounded altogether such a phenomenon as 

[183] 



none of the party had ever before seen or 
imagined. The apparition paused on the 
threshold, and stretching out his hands and 
spreading his long thin fingers, exclaimed: — 
"Satan avaunt! Hast thou spread thy snares 
for me in the wilderness? Sons and daughters 
of Belial! leave your abominations and lewd 
meetings and revelries, and fall on your knees 
and humble yourselves before the Lord, with 
fasting and mortification and godly groans." 
"Leave your grimaces," said King Arthur, 
"and eat, drink, and be merry." "If any be 
merry," said the apparition, "let him sing 
psalms." "Drink," said Bacchus, "here is 
a cup of Chian for you. I am the soaring 
Bacchus." "Avaunt! Beelzebub!" said the 
spectre. "Touch me not. Children of Belial, 
I say unto you — " "Stop," said Arthur: — 

" Now say what manner of man art thou. 
And whither wouldst thou rove, 
And why hast thou that clouded brow, 
And is it for some evil vow. 
Or for thy lady love?" 

"I am one," said the stranger, "whose feet 
are joyful on the mountains, for he bringeth 
good tidings." "So it should seem," said Sir 
Launcelot, "by your pleasant physiognomy." 
"I am a missionary of the New Light," said 
the stranger. "The spirit has moved me to 
[184] 



wander and call back the stray sheep, the 
heathen and the gentile, unto the fold of 
sanctificatlon. But the wind hath whirled me 
about, and the sea hath cast me forth among 
you. You are the children of Belial, and 
shall be cast Into outer darkness." 

"I understand this fellow," said Bacchus. 
"He is one of the same caste as the old Cov- 
enanters, whose dismal faces and frightful 
noises compelled us, as a mere matter of 
taste, to forsake the ancient world. Let me 
talk to him. You are a missionary of the 
New Light?" "Verily I am a chosen vessel." 
"We are all staunch heathen here. You 
would like to convert us?" "Truly I would 
baptise you In Jordan, and whitewash your 
Inward man." "Very well. There is a 
prophetess who lives just by In a cave in the 
wood. She is an oracle. Convert her, and 
we will all follow. You have only to get the 
best of the argument with her, and your vic- 
tory Is complete." "I will buckle on the 
armour of controversy and beat down Satan 
under my feet." Pan undertook to show 
him the way, and conducted him to the cave 
of a beautiful wood nymph, with whom he 
left him. 

A month passed away, and they heard 
nothing of him, till one night, while the 
palace was resounding with the sounds of 

[185] 



music and the feet of the dancers, the wood- 
nymph appeared among them, followed by 
the Chosen Vessel. It was with difficulty 
that they recognised him, for he was in the 
dress of a Bacchanal; his hair was curling 
and bound with a wreath of vine leaves; his 
face was round; his eyes sparkled; his right 
hand brandished a thyrsus, and in his left he 
carried a goblet, which he held out with a 
significant Bacchic gesture to Bedevere. Bed- 
evere filled it with wine, and the missionary, 
advancing to Bacchus, poured a libation be- 
fore him and knelt on one knee. Bacchus 
raised him up, embraced him with delight, 
and said: — "The nymph, I see, had the best 
of the argument." "She has converted me, I 
confess," said the missionary. "By what 
process of logic," said Bacchus, "we will not 
enquire too closely." The proselyte smiled, 
the nymph blushed, and, taking him by the 
hand, led him into the mazes of the dance, 
where he frolicked the gayest of the gay. "I 
protest," said Queen Guenevere, "he is really 
a handsome fellow. Who would have thought 
it.f*" "Such is the difference," said Bacchus, 
"between cheerful and gloomy creeds. Cheer- 
fulness is the great source and fountain of 
beauty; but the ugliest object in nature is a 
human visage distorted by a fanatical faith." 
King Arthur learned from this new comer 
[i86] 



that all Europe was in an uproar; that the 
swinish multitude had broken loose, and was 
playing at cup and ball with sceptres and 
crowns. "Well," said King Arthur to Merlin, 
"what say you?" "I say," said Merlin, "as 
I have always said: — 'Patience!'" "You 
have said so," said King Arthur, "any time 
these thousand years." "But you see very 
clearly," said Merlin, "things are continu- 
ally getting better." "I maintain," said 
King Arthur, "that they are continually 
getting worse; for I am certain that though 
in my time there were many monsters whom 
I and my good knights did slay, there were 
no such monsters as these Chosen Vessels, of 
whom it seems there are swarms in that coun- 
try now." "That is an oscillation," said 
Merlin, "or accidental variation, or, to speak 
more correctly, a secular moral equation, as 
I will prove:" and Merlin being a perfectivi- 
tive and King Arthur a deteriorationist, they 
immediately lapsed into an argument on a 
point which they had argued for a thousand 
years, and were of the same opinions still. 

The Chosen Vessel became a new light 
among the Gentiles, and an especial darling 
of Bacchus and Pan. The first fruit of his 
theological controversy with the wood-nymph 
was our hero Calidore; and the year which 
placed Calidore on the marriageable list, the 

[187] 



number of males exceeding that of females by- 
one, the lot fell on him to set sail and choose 
a wife for himself in England. He was 
charged with the usual commissions from the 
ladies and Merlin, with this addition from 
the latter, that being desirous to understand 
the progress of things viva voce from a philoso- 
pher, he commissioned him to bring over, on 
any terms, the finest philosopher he could 
buy. 

CHAPTER IV 

The first object of Calidore on arriving in 
London was to change some of his gold Ar- 
thurs into the circulating medium of the 
country, and on making inquiry at his hotel, 
he was directed, for this purpose, to a spacious 
stone building with high walls and no windows. 
Alighting from his hackney-coach, with a 
money-box in his hand, he wandered through 
a labyrinth of paved courts and spacious 
rooms filled with smoky-faced clerks and 
solid globes of Jews, through some of which 
he had great difficulty in forcing his way. 
After some time, he discovered the office he 
wanted, presented his gold, which was duly 
tried, weighed, and carefully removed from 
his sight. The sum was enounced with very 
distinct articulation, and a piece of paper 
[i88] 



was given to him, with which he was sent to 
another place. "How would you like it, sir?" 
said a little sharp-nosed man with a quill be- 
hind his ear. "In the circulating medium of 
this city," said Calidore. "But I mean, sir, 
in what portions?" "In no portions: I wish 
to have it all at once," "Thousands, sir?" 
said the little man. "The specified sum, sir," 
said Calidore. The little man put into his 
hand several slips of paper. "Well, sir!" 
said Calidore, "what am I to do with these?" 
"Whatever you please, sir," said the little 
man, smiling. "I wish I could say as much 
for myself." "I am much obliged to you," 
said Calidore; "and I have no doubt you are 
an exceedingly facetious and agreeable person; 
but, at the same time, if you would have the 
goodness to direct me where I can receive my 
money — " — "Sir," said the little man, 
"that is your money." "This!" "Certainly, 
sir; that. What would you have?" "Gold 
coin, to be sure," said Calidore. "Gold coin! 
I am afraid, sir, you are a disaffected man and 
a Jacobin, or you would not ask for such a 
thing, when I have given you the best money 
in the world. Pray, sir, look at it — you are 
a stranger, perhaps — look at it, sir; that's 
all." Calidore looked at one of the pieces of 
paper, and read aloud: "I promise to pay to 
Mr. Henry Hare — One Thousand Pounds — 
[189] 



John Figginbotham. — Well, sir; and what 
have I to do with John Figginbotham's 
promise to pay a thousand pounds to Henry- 
Hare?" "John Figginbotham, sir, having 
made that promise, and put it upon that 
paper, makes that paper worth a thousand 
pounds." "To Henry Hare," said Calidore. 
"To any one," said the little man. "You 
overlook the words: or bearer. Now, sir, 
you are the bearer." "I understand. John 
Figginbotham promises to pay me a thou- 
sand pounds." "Precisely." "Then, sir, if 
you will have the goodness to direct me to 
John Figginbotham I will thank him to pay 
me directly." "But, good God, sir! you mis- 
take the matter." "Mistake, sir!" "Yes, 
sir! John Figginbotham does not pay; he 
only signs. We pay: we, who are here; I 
and my chums." "Very well, sir; then why 
can you not pay me without all this circum- 
locution?" "Sir, I have paid you." "How, 
sir?" "With those notes, sir." "Sir, these 
are promises to pay, made by one Figgin- 
botham. I wish these promises to be per- 
formed. You send me round in a circle from 
Hare to Figginbotham, and from Figgin- 
botham to yourself, and I am still as much 
in the dark as ever, as to where I am to look 
for the performance of their very liberal 
promises." "Oh! the performance, sir, — 
[ 190] 



very true sir, — as you say; but, sir, promises 
are of two kinds, those which are meant to be 
performed, and those which are not, the latter 
being forms used for convenience and dispatch 
of business." "Then, sir, these promises are 
not meant to be performed." "Pardon me, 
sir, they are meant to be performed, not 
literally, but in a manner. They used to be 
performed by giving gold to the bearer, but 
that having been found peculiarly inconven- 
ient has been laid aside by Act of Parlia- 
ment ever since the year Ninety-Seven, and 
we now pay paper with paper, which simpli- 
fies business exceedingly." "And pray, sir, 
do these promises to pay pass for realities 
among the people?" "Certainly they do, 
sir; one of those slips of paper which you 
hold in your hand will purchase the labour of 
fifty men for a year." "John Figginbotham 
must be a person of very great consequence; 
there is not much trouble I presume in mak- 
ing one of these things." "Not much, sir." 
"Then I suppose, sir, John Figginbotham has 
all the labour of the country under his abso- 
lute disposal. Assuredly this Figginbotham 
must be a great magician, and profoundly 
skilled in magic and demonology: for this is 
almost more than Merlin could do, to make 
the eternal repetition of the same promise 
pass for its eternal performance, and exercise 
[191] 



unlimited control over the lives and fortunes 
of a whole nation, merely by putting his name 
upon pieces of paper. However, since such 
is the case, I must try to make the best of the 
matter: but if I find that these talismans of 
the great magician Figginbotham do not act 
upon the people as you give me to under- 
stand they will, I shall take the liberty of 
blowing my bugle in his enchanted castle, and 
in the meantime, sir, I respectfully take leave 
of your courtly presence." "Poor, deranged 
gentleman!" exclaimed the little man after 
Calidore was gone, "did you ever hear a man 
talk so in all your life, Mr. Solomons?" 
"Very much cracked," said Mr. Solomons, 
"very much cracked in the head; but seems 
to be sound in the pocket, which is the better 
part of man." 

Calidore finding the talismans of Figgin- 
botham sufficiently efficacious, proceeded to 
establish himself in a magnificent house, en- 
gaged numerous servants, purchased an equi- 
page, and lived like an ambassador. He 
suffered so much of his object to be known 
as might facilitate its accomplishment; and 
it was soon buzzed about the town and signifi- 
cantly told in dashes by the Morning Post 
that a stranger of great consequence was ar- 
rived from Terra Incognita, whither he would 
shortly return, and take with him from Eng- 
[192] 



land a wife and a philosopher; which would 
be a very good speculation for any unmarried 
lady and literary gentleman, as on their 
arrival in the stranger's country, the former 
would receive a most splendid allowance of 
pin money, and the latter would sit down for 
life as an Honourable Pensioner, with such a 
pension in his single person as in this more 
economical nation would keep in pay two 
whole gangs of Legitimate Reviewers. This 
intelligence threw into a state of complete 
fermentation all the disinterested beauty and 
liberal talent of the metropolis, and all the 
seats of the Carlisle mails were engaged every 
night for a week in bringing up shoals of em- 
bryo laureates and poetical philosophers from 
Cumberland. 

Calidore persuading himself that he had 
already made up his mind in the choice 
of a wife, prosecuted with great assiduity 
his search for a philosopher, and made dili- 
gent enquiries of several eminent booksellers, 
and among the rest of the fashionable Mr. 
Macquire. "A philosopher. Sir," said Mr. 
Macquire: "really the article is rather plenti- 
ful in the market, but I have not a sample 
on hand. A critic, indeed — I could spare 
you a fine lively critic on reasonable terms, 
as I have several in my pay; but they are 
all sworn enemies to the very name of philos- 
[ 193] 



ophy, and if it be mentioned in their hear- 
ing, one of them faints, another cries, another 
swears terrible oaths, and a fourth falls into 
such a fit of raving that I am obliged to call 
for a strait-waistcoat. To be sure there is a 
Mr. Crocodile, the lay-preacher, who looks in 
upon me now and then, and talks a great deal 
about old philosophy; perhaps he might do, 
and I should think he would go cheap; he is 
worth little to us, and I never could hear that 
he was worth anything to anyone else; but 
here Is a gentleman who knows more about 
these things; allow me to Introduce Mr. In- 
dex." And he presented to Calidore a very 
smart, lively looking little man, dressed In 
the pink of fashion. "Sir," said Mr. Index, 
"I am proud of the opportunity of this In- 
troduction. From the moment I heard of 
your arrival In London I have longed for the 
honour of your acquaintance." 



[ 194] 



BOOSABOUT ABBEY 



BOOSABOUT ABBEY 

"These walls will survive their founda- 
tion," said a stalwart friar, standing by the 
side of the mitred Abbot Ernulph, as he 
leaned down, with a trowel in his hand, to 
lay the first stone of Boosabout Abbey. The 
Abbot did not understand the remark, but 
thought it not the time and place to notice 
it. 

The older Abbey was a poor inconvenient 
structure, partially in decay. The brother- 
hood had extensive lands, and a full treasury; 
and had determined to do honour to the faith, 
by providing a more spacious and convenient 
habitation for their own at once ghostly and 
substantial persons. There was on the occa- 
sion a numerous assembly of portly eccle- 
siastics and jolly laymen, who loved the 
church well, and gave largely to it. The cere- 
mony was followed by a jovial festival. The 
refectory of the old Abbey was too small to 
accommodate the party, and as it was a 
bright calm summer day, the tables were 
spread under the shade of a circle of gigantic 

[197] 



elms, of which the wide-spreading branches 
mingled from side to side, excluding the sun, 
and leaving ample space for the feast. 

The sun had not long passed the meridian 
when the party sat down, and was not far 
from the north-western horizon when they 
rose from their seats. All but the friars de- 
parted for their homes. Some rode, oscillat- 
ing on their horses like inverted pendulums 
reflected on water; others walked, describing 
every possible variety of curve. Some reached 
home; others made to themselves temporary 
hostelries under trees by the way-side, and on 
the following morning had very advantageous 
views of the rising sun. Brother John, and 
some of the more hard-headed friars, piously 
carried the Father Abbot to bed. Some of 
the brethren went to bed of themselves; 
some slept quietly within the circle of elms. 
The whole affair passed off with great deco- 
rum. In the morning, the Abbot had a con- 
fused recollection of something having been 
said by Brother John, and asked him to re- 
peat his remark. 

"I said," replied Brother John, "These 
walls will survive their foundations." 

"You are always speaking in riddles, 

Brother John," said the Abbot, "and when 

they are explained, there is always a touch 

of heresy in them. I recommend you a little 

[198] 



caution, or you may find yourself In a di- 
lemma with the Heads of the Church." 

"I have no fear of that," said Brother John. 
"I am ready with a most orthodox profession 
of faith, and a most sturdy denial, or peni- 
tential retraction, of any errors that may be 
charged against me. I have tried it more 
than once, and have been always not only 
absolved, but extolled and honoured as a 
pillar of the faith." 

"You may try it once too often. Brother 
John," said the Abbot. "But what is this new 
riddle of yours, which seems to be nonsense, 
about walls surviving their foundation?" 

"Their foundation is faith," said Brother 
John. "The walls will be standing, when the 
faith has departed. I have been a Crusader 
and a Pilgrim. I have seen many temples of 
the old world, without a single votary of the 
divinities to whom they were raised." 

"They were false divinities," said the 
Abbot. 

"All is one for that," said Brother John. 
"True or false, after a lapse of centuries, 
the result will be the same. I have seen 
Pagan temples become Christian churches, 
and Christian churches become Moham- 
medan mosques. That which has been is 
that which shall be. There is nothing new 
under the sun." 

[199] 



"The foundation will last our time," said 
the Abbot. 

"No doubt," said Brother John. 

"Then look to your own charge," said the 
Abbot, "which is the cellar. See it well 
stocked with choice vintages. You have in 
your day drained many flasks — " 

"Casks," said Brother John. 

"Casks, if you please," said the Abbot, 
"and you were not very scrupulous how you 
came by them. You were a Pilgrim, you say. 
You used your Pilgrim's staff as a collector 
of revenue, to pay the cost of your pilgrimage." 

"I collected," said Brother John, "no more 
than I wanted for the poor needs of the day. 
I took no thought of the morrow." 

"You were a Crusader, too," said the 
Abbot. "You took some questionable fol- 
lowers to the Holy Land, and brought them 
back no better than they went." 

"Much better," said Brother John, "much 
better, for what they had to do." 

"After your return," said the Abbot, "how 
did you employ them?" 

"In very efficient public service," said 
Brother John. "I occupied a stronghold over 
a great public highway, and kept it clear of 
thieves." 

"Paying yourself for your public service," 
said the Abbot, "by levying toll on travellers." 

[ 200 ] 



"A fair and equitable tariff," said Brother 
John. "An ad valorem duty on their baggage." 

"You lived," said the Abbot, "like Rinaldo 
di Montalbano. They say, you sometimes 
took young women in commutation of tax." 

"Only with their own consent," said 
Brother John. "If one of my followers 
wanted a wife, and a young maid was willing 
to stay and marry him, where was the harm 
in retaining her, with the concurrence of all 
parties concerned?" 

"That was not all," said the Abbot. "They 
say you were not over scrupulous in retaining 
another man's wife." 

"Always with her own consent," said 
Brother John, "and sometimes with her hus- 
band's. When there was an ill-assorted pair, 
I acted as a High Court of Divorce, and re- 
lieved them of one another." 

"Condemning the husband in costs," said 
the Abbot, "confiscating his baggage to pay 
them, and taking his wife to yourself." 

"Only once," said Brother John. "Only 
one wife." 

"One at a time, I suppose," said the 
Abbot. 

"No," said Brother John. "Only one once 
for all. I divorced her lawfully, and I mar- 
ried her lawfully." 

"By your own code," said the Abbot. 

[201 ] 



"As good a code as any," said Brother 
John, "and better, inasmuch as it had the 
advantage of brevity." 

"Of course," said the Abbot, "you enjoyed 
your life in your stronghold." 

"Indeed I did," said Brother John, "and 
so did all about me. My wife was an excel- 
lent wife. Her first husband did not appre- 
ciate the blessing he possessed." 

"So you appreciated her for him," said the 
Abbot. "But how came you to give up this 
moral and agreeable life?" 

"The King," said Brother John, "grew 
jealous of my keeping better order in his 
dominions than he could do, and invested my 
stronghold with a large force. I kept him at 
bay till my provisions fell short. Then I 
capitulated and was allowed to march out 
with the honours of war." 

"And what then?" said the Abbot. 

"Why, then," said Brother John, "my men 
dispersed." 

"And what then?" said the Abbot. "You 
and your wife — " 

A sudden change came over the face of 
Brother John. He smote his forehead with 
his clenched fist, and walked silently away. 

"There is some mystery," said the Abbot 
to himself, "about my good son John. He is 
a good fellow at bottom, with all his aberra- 

[ 202 ] 



tions. He has never been so communicative 
as he has been today. He has often seemed 
disposed to be so; but he has always stopped 
short. Today he has gone a step further. 
He has had a wife and has lost her, and the 
remembrance is painful. I will not press him 
on the subject, but no doubt in due time he 
will be more confidential. I am inclined to 
think he exaggerates his natural joviality to 
conceal a hidden sorrow, and suffers most at 
heart when he is most hyperbolically merry." 



[203 ] 



JULIA PROCULA 



JULIA PROCULA 



In a retired street of Rome stood the house 
of Julius Proculus; a man of an old family 
and a small patrimonial estate; a widower, 
with an only daughter. Julia was pious, and 
especially devout to her Household God, on 
whose altar she placed every morning her 
offering of fruits and flowers. Proculus was an 
Epicurean; he respected his daughter's feel- 
ings, but had no sympathy with her devotion. 

Julia had a young lover, Marcus Atilius, 
a son of a rich family, who refused their 
sanction to his suit, because the damsel had 
no dowry. The reversion of the small estate, 
on which Proculus barely maintained his 
household, oifered no temptation to his 
wealthy neighbors, who, as usual, having 
more than enough already, wanted more. 

Proculus, in the principles of his philosophy, 
aimed at tranquillity of mind, and to a certain 
extent succeeded in attaining it; but he was 
of a social and festive disposition; he liked 
the moderate enjoyment of the good things 
of this world; he was fond of good company, 
[207] 



and preferred Falernlan to Sabine wine. In 
the principles of his philosophy, also, he was 
prudent, and contracted no debts; but when 
his larder and cellar were ill-stocked, and 
his purse deficient in gravity, he could not 
always preserve himself from feelings of dis- 
content, which would sometimes break out 
into a good hearty railing against Fortune, 
and occasionally into an expression of as- 
tonishment at his daughter's devotion to the 
Lar, to whom he thought himself and his 
family under very small obligation. 

In one of these moods, he said one morning 
to his daughter: "I cannot imagine a Lar 
who has had better opportunities of taking 
care of the family entrusted to him, or who 
has made a worse use of it. My father, and 
grandfather, and great-grandfather were all 
men of penurious habits; my father, es- 
pecially, was a genuine miser; he was more- 
over addicted to commerce; his dealings were 
understood to be prosperous; he died in 
Syracuse, and intelligence of his death was 
duly conveyed to me; but not a sesterce of 
coin have I inherited from him; nothing but 
this poor old estate, which may, for anything 
I know, have belonged to my namesake, who 
was the only person that ever had the honour 
to see Quirinus, after his deification, and who 
may, for anything I know also, have been my 

[208] 



thirtieth great-grandfather." Julia, who was 
fond both of her Lar and her father, made no 
reply. Proculus went on: "And here is this 
Atilian family, which ought to think itself 
honoured by having such a daughter-in-law as 
you would be in yourself, to say nothing of 
my possible ancestor, who was the only per- 
sonal friend Quirinus has ever had in this 
world; at any rate we have better claims 
than anyone else to be descended from him; 
but will not suffer their son's suit to you be- 
cause you have no dowry. Now I say your Lar, 
with his opportunities, ought to have taken 
care that you should have had a dowry." 

"I think he will do so yet, father," said 
Julia. "He has promised me as much in a 
dream." 

"A dream indeed," said Proculus. "There 
is no more chance than of the flower buds in 
that garland which you have suspended to 
him bursting into full blossom." 

The father and daughter fixed their eyes on 
the garland, and the flowers suddenly expanded. 

"There is an omen, father!" said Julia. 

"A strange coincidence," said Proculus. 
"But the flowers must have been ready to 
open when you gathered them." 

Julia shook her head at her father's scep- 
ticism, but she smiled at the omen, for she 
certainly thought it a good one. 
[209 ] 



II 

Julia had retired, and Proculus was alone. 
He fell into a reverie, with his eyes fixed on 
the garland. By degrees the marble behind 
the altar of the Lar seemed to assume human 
lineaments, till at length a figure like a draped 
statue stood before him. 

"You are ungrateful, Proculus," said the 
Lar, "and I am come to convince you of 
your ingratitude." 

"I shall be much obliged to you," said 
Proculus, "if you will begin by informing me 
if I am awake; or whether I am dreaming of 
you, as my daughter did." 

The Lar. — "I visited your daughter in a 
dream; but you are wide awake. I promised 
her a dowry, and I shall keep my word. And 
you are dissatisfied with your condition in 
life. I will place you in any other that you 
m^y like better." 



Ill 

Proculus had a rich neighbor, Caius Sul- 
picius, who gave good suppers. Proculus was 
one of his favourite guests. Sulpiclus had 
one virtue which did not belong to all the 
magnates of the time; he treated all his com- 
pany alike. There was no mortification for 

[210] 



a poor client; all had the same wine, the 
same bread, the same cooled water as the 
master of the feast. There was nothing to 
check the expansion of good spirits, and in 
general, at a supper of Sulpicius, all was joy 
and jollity. There was also a due intermix- 
ture of philosophical discussion, in that pleas- 
ant form of successive questions on particular 
points, which give so great a charm to the 
several symposia which antiquity has con- 
signed to us. 

Proculus was at one of these suppers on 
the evening after his interview with the Lar. 
His scepticism had been so disturbed, and 
his mind thrown into such a state of per- 
plexity by his adventure of the morning, 
that he remained absent and absorbed; not 
taking, as customary, a prominent share in 
the conversation, till his attention was aroused 
by a turn in the argument, which had fallen 
on supernatural appearances, and a guest in 
his immediate vicinity was narrating a mar- 
vellous tale. This chimed in with the current 
of his thought, and he gave all his attention 
to the narrator. 

The lovers knelt together before the altar 
of the Lar. A bright light shone on it for a 
moment, and a voice whispered in Julia's 
ear, — "Withdraw from the altar." She 

[211] 



caught her lover's hand, and retired to the 
side of the hall. Presently they heard from 
without a cry resembling that in Aristo- 
phanes's Comedy, The Frogs, when Charon 
gives rowing time to Bacchus: — "O — op, 
op! o — op, op! o — op, op!" and simulta- 
neously with the last "op" a ponderous stone 
vase was projected through the window, and 
lighted with a loud crash on the altar of the 
Lar, where it broke into a thousand pieces, 
and scattered all round the altar a shower of 
gold. The same voice whispered to Julia: — 
"This is your dowry." 

We must now look back a little in our nar- 
rative, to trace the origin and progress of 
this marvellous projectile. 

Julius Proculus walked to the Forum, and 
the first person he met was Caius Atilius, the 
father of Marcus, who accosted him abruptly. 

Caius Atilius. — "They tell me, Julius Pro- 
culus, that you admit my son to visit your 
daughter." 

Julius Proculus. — "They tell you the 
truth, Caius Atilius." 

Caius Atilius. — "It is very unbecoming 
that when a young man's father has pro- 
hibited his addresses to a young woman, the 
young woman's father should permit him to 
visit her." 

[212] 



Julius Proculus. — "I do not see the un- 
becomingness. It is for you to enforce your 
own prohibition. I like him, and my daughter 
likes him, and shut my door in his face I 
most assuredly will not." 

Caius Atilius. — "You cannot suppose that 
I shall allow my son to marry a girl without a 
dowry." 

Julius Proculus. — "You have said so often 
enough to ensure its not being forgotten." 

Caius Atilius. — "Then what do you 
expect?" 

Julius Proculus. — " Nothing. It pleases 
them to meet, and no harm comes of it." 

Caius Atilius. — "That is more than you 
know." 

Julius Proculus. — "I can trust my daugh- 
ter. But to guard against evil tongues Psecas 
never quits them." 

Caius Atilius. — "Psecas! A slave girl! 
A piece of furniture!" 

Julius Proculus. — "A piece of furniture 
with a heart and a head which many a patri- 
cian lady would be the better for. No harm 
comes of it, and that is enough for today. I 
shall legislate for tomorrow when it arrives." 

Caius Atilius. — "I know my right. I 
shall find means to control him." 

Julius Proculus. — "Do so. That is your 
affair. Only do not pretend to control me. 
[213 ] 



You are only richer than I am; neither better 
nor nobler. There was no Atilius in Rome 
when there was a Julius Proculus, the only 
living being who ever saw Quirinus." 

Caius Atilius. — "That is your old joke." 
Julius Proculus. — "No more a joke than 
any other old stemma." 

Caius Atilius. — "At any rate his peculiar 
intimacy with Quirinus has not much bene- 
fited his posterity." 

Julius Proculus. — "So I told my daughter 
this morning, who insists that Quirinus's 
friend is our own particular Lar. I think he 
might take better care of us. She says he 
will yet. But take care you do not make 
yourself a Heautontimoroumenos.^ There are 
still kings in Asia who want soldiers." 
Caius Atilius. — "What do you mean?" 
Julius Proculus. — "Only to give you a 
hint not to push things too far. Nothing will 
be done without your concurrence. Persuade 
him to give up Julia, and I will persuade her 
to give up him. But I will use no compul- 
sion. And as to the dowry, perhaps my an- 
cestor may yet make interest with Quirinus 
on the subject." 

* A character in one of Terence's comedies. 



[214] 



THE LORD OF THE HILLS 



THE LORD OF THE HILLS 

A travelling carriage stopped at a little inn 
near the foot of the mountains which sepa- 
rate Silesia from Bohemia. The accommoda- 
tions were not externally very promising, and 
the party in the carriage were divided be- 
tween the expediency of staying till the 
morning or proceeding by night. The land- 
lady, a round, plump, motherly little body, 
seemed very indifferent which way they de- 
cided; promising, however, to do her best for 
them if they determined to remain. Before 
deciding the question they alighted and 
walked Into the best, and indeed only, par- 
lour^ where the accident of a blazing fire 
fixed their wavering resolution, and they pro- 
ceeded to arrange themselves around It. It 
was an evening on the confines of summer 
and autumn, and chilly enough to make a 
fire agreeable. 

The party consisted of Monsieur and 

Madame de VIrelai, their daughter Adeline, 

and Elise, a young girl of humble origin, who 

had been brought up in the family; and she, 

[217] 



with the nominal office of lady's maid, was 
more a friend than a domestic, but suffi- 
ciently of the latter to be the factotum of 
the party, and to be extremely useful to 
persons who had never found it necessary, 
and therefore had never learned, to do any- 
thing useful for themselves. 

Monsieur was solicitous about his supper, 
Madame about her bed. Elise followed the 
landlady to attend to these important matters, 
and Mademoiselle Adeline, who gave herself 
little concern about either, sat watching the 
crackling of the faggots. 

Elise returned with a favourable report, 
and was shortly followed by the landlady, 
who placed on the table some coffee, en at- 
tendant le souper. The coffee was found ex- 
cellent, and taken by Monsieur as a good 
omen. Dismissing all anxiety about his 
night's entertainment, he proceeded to talk 
about their journey. 

"I am glad we stopped here," said Mon- 
sieur. "We shall travel more comfortably 
over the mountains by daylight." 

"And shall see the scenery, which we should 
otherwise have lost," said Mademoiselle. 

"And have less fear of thieves or spirits," 
said Madame. "These mountains have been 
haunted by both, whatever they may be now." 

"I take it," said Monsieur, "the plains 

[218] 



have more thieves than the mountains, but 
perhaps the mountains have more spirits than 
the plains. And the reason is, that the 
plains grow rich, and the mountains remain 
poor. Theft follows riches, and superstition 
remains with poverty." 

"Be that as it may," said Madame, "I 
had rather pass these mountains by day than 
by night." 

"So would I, mamma, for the sake of see- 
ing them," said Adeline. "But I should like 
of all things to fall in with the mountain 
spirit in these regions. I should not be at all 
afraid, and would willingly go on by night 
for the chance of them, even one." 

"It is just that chance," said Madame, 
"that I prefer to avoid by staying here." 

"You must excuse me," said Monsieur, 
"but I cannot help laughing again that a 
lady from Paris, at this time of the nineteenth 
century, should regulate her motions by the 
possibility of those of Numbernlp." 

"You may as well," said Madame, "as we 
are about to pass through his territory, speak 
of him with more respect. He does not like 
his nickname. Call him the Lord of the 
Hills." 

"The Lord of the Hills if you please," said 
Monsieur, laughing again. "I beg his Lord- 
ship's pardon." 

[219] 



"And I do not see," said Madame, "why 
what is not true in Paris should be not true 
anywhere else. The beaux esprits there have 
talked me out of belief in any thing but a 
chaos of abstract doctrines, which are to set 
all the world to rights when those who have 
muddled them together can agree how to 
disembroil them. In the meantime, in the 
circles of Paris, the existence of a mountain 
cataract is just as improbable as the existence 
of a mountain spirit. A man emerging from 
that world into this world would be just as 
much unprepared for the first as the second." 

"Very likely," said Monsieur, "but the 
Paris circles have at least information of 
mountain cataracts on living and credible 
testimony, and they have none such of moun- 
tain spirits." 

"Nobody," said Madame, "speaks in Paris, 
with all its free discussion, of anything which 
would subject the speaker to be laughed at. 
The shame of being laughed at is as formi- 
dable to that enlightened society as the shame 
of mocking the Lord of the Hills is to me. 
Therefore there may be living testimony, 
though the Parisians do not receive it." 

"One would almost think," said Monsieur, 
"that you had fallen in with such testimony." 

"If I had," said Madame, "I should keep 
it to myself in sceptical company." 
[ 220] 



"There are still," said Monsieur, "plenty 
of people in the world of very enlarged and 
liberal credulity." 

"No doubt," said Madame, "but they will 
only believe en masse. The sceptical and the 
credulous are equally intolerant of an opinion 
not countenanced by numbers." 

"Perhaps," said Monsieur, "in the place 
where we now are the belief in the Lord of the 
Hills may be countenanced by numbers." 

"Oh! I should like of all things," said Ade- 
line, "to know what the people here think 
about it. Let us ask the landlady when she 
comes in with the supper." 

An earlier opportunity presented itself, 
for the landlady made her appearance to re- 
quest permission for three new arrivals to 
join the party; two military officers and a 
benighted sportsman. Permission being ob- 
tained, the guests were introduced. 

The two officers were companions, and evi- 
dently warm friends, notwithstanding a great 
disparity in their ages; one being a man of 
about sixty, and the other of not more than 
twenty-five. The sportsman was a merry 
looking man on the youthful side of the 
middle age. The carriage party, who had 
been somewhat disconcerted at the prospect 
of chance company, which in an inn with but 
one good room could not well be avoided, 

[221 ] 



were reconciled by a single glance at the new- 
comers, and returned their salutations with 
cheerfulness and cordiality. 

Mademoiselle took the opportunity to put 
her question to the landlady. "We have been 
talking," she said, "about the traditions of 
this neighbourhood. Is the Lord of the Hills 
still in existence?" 

"I never saw him," answered the landlady 
smiKng, "nor ever heard of anyone who 
did." 

"But I mean," said Adeline, "do the 
people here believe in his existence?" 

"There are people who will believe any- 
thing," said the landlady, smiling again. 

"Very true," said Monsieur, smiling at 
Madame. 

"It is something new," he added, when the 
landlady had retired, "to bring faith from 
Paris to a local superstition which has died 
on its own ground." 

Madame was mute. She did not choose to 
speak on the subject before strangers. 

"Scarcely died," said Adeline. "It seems 
there are still some believers." 

"Many," said the elder officer, "If you 
speak of the celebrated Numbernip. Local 
superstitions do not easily die, especially in 
the mountains, where solitude and fantastic 
sights and sounds tend so strongly to keep 

[ 222 ] 



them alive. I have myself three times passed 
these mountains. I have never seen anything 
strange, but have heard sounds that have 
puzzled me, to say the least of it." 

"Oh! pray tell us," said Mademoiselle. 

"There is little to tell," said the officer, 
"but a singular repetition of the same thing 
in the same place. In my young days I was 
an enthusiast for liberty, and on the out- 
breaking of the French Revolution I hurried 
to Paris alone and on foot, to be a witness 
of the regeneration of man. My home was 
not distant from the foot of these mountains, 
and my route led over them. On gaining the 
summit of the road, I paused to rest, and 
look back on the fields of my youth. I could 
leave them for the first time without regret. 
I had no kindred to mourn for me; but there 
was one pair of bright eyes which I thought 
would miss me and watch for my return. 
Sitting on a fragment of stone, and thinking 
as I have often done aloud, I broke out into 
a rhapsody in anticipation of the progress of 
light and liberty, and the downfall of tyranny 
and superstition. My vision was broken by 
a loud laugh of derision which echoed and re- 
echoed among the rocks. I looked every- 
where around but saw nothing but barren 
crags and the short mossy verdure of the 
mountain summits. The sound was not re- 
[223] 



peated. I concluded that my excited im- 
agination had deceived me, and I proceeded 
on my way." 

The entrance of supper suspended the 
progress of the narration. The supper far 
surpassed Monsieur's expectations. It con- 
sisted chiefly of fowl and game in great abun- 
dance and variety, with several bottles of 
most excellent wine. Monsieur expressed his 
surprise. The sportsman acknowledged that 
he had furnished the game, and that, being 
on his rambles an occasional visitant of the 
inn, he kept a small cellar of his own there 
for the entertainment of himself and his 
friends. Monsieur was delighted, and the 
company grew into high good humour with 
themselves and each other. When the main 
business of the table was completed, Adeline 
asked the officer if he had completed his 
story. 

"By no means," answered the officer. 
"Time passed on. The dreams of liberty 
passed away, and changed into dreams of 
conquest and universal empire. I was then 
an officer of the French army. I re-passed 
the same mountains to look on the scenes of 
my youth. I sat on the same stone and, 
thinking aloud as before, I indulged in a 
new rhapsody about the Augustan age, uni- 
versal peace under an enlightened head, and 
[224] 



the diffusion of science, which would prepare 
mankind for universal liberty. 

"Again the same loud laugh of derision 
echoed and re-echoed among the crags. Still 
I saw nothing, and the sounds were not 
repeated. 

"I visited my native valley. The bright 
eyes which I had thought would miss me had 
long since beamed kindly on another. I 
found them overlooking the operations of a 
farm and shining on a jolly husband and half 
a dozen chubby children. I was recognized 
and heartily welcomed. I felt that all was 
as it should be, and that I ought to be as de- 
lighted as my host, but I was not. I could 
not help thinking that the honest farmer had 
the best of it. 

"On my return, I sat down on the stone, 
but I was in no mood to rhapsodise, and my 
reverie was undisturbed. 

"Once more I passed these mountains. 
The sceptre of the mighty had been broken, 
and the rabble of the nations was shouting 
at the heels of barbarian monarchs, who had 
quickly turned round and set their feet upon 
their necks; but time had passed on, and 
brought the three glorious days.^ Once more 
I sat on the same stone, and rhapsodised of 
the march of mind and the final triumph of 
* Of July, 1830, a revolution in Paris. 
[225 ] 



reason, and once more the same loud laugh of 
derision, issuing I know not whence marred 
my meditations. I visited the farm. There I 
found the diiference which time had made. 
My first love was a widow and a grandmother. 
Her son-in-law was the farmer, and the eldest 
grandchild was much such a girl as she had 
been when I sallied forth in my visions of 
liberty, forty years before. Tomorrow I 
shall pass the mountains perhaps for the last 
time. I am returning to re- visit the farm; 
and if the family will receive me as an inmate, 
I shall finish my days in my native valley. 
My young friend accompanies me; partly 
from friendship, partly for an excursion, and 
partly to hear what he calls the echo that 
laughs at illusions; but if that be its char- 
acter I shall furnish no food for it; for all 
my illusions are over." 

"It will be enough to say that," said the 
sportsman. "Man cannot live without illu- 
sions. His life is nothing else. The echo 
that laughs at illusions will laugh as heartily 
as ever at the idea of a featherless biped with- 
out them. You have followed liberty. I 
follow a hare. Either serves as a spell to 
draw us through the day. Lose it or win it, 
we resume the chase of the same thing, or 
something else, to-morrow. The game which 
I can pass the whole day in pursuing, I would 
[226] 



scarcely pick up if it lay in my way. As an 
end it is everything. As a possession it is 
nothing." 

"It is something," said Monsieur, " with 
currant jelly. But this echo of yours; it must 
have been an echo, however excited." 

"I should like of all things to hear it," said 
Adeline. "We can muster illusions among us 
enough to wake it." 

"If it was an echo," said the officer. "I 
tried it with shouts, and obtained no answer." 

"And if it is even a spirit," said Monsieur, 
"it might not choose to speak to a large 
party." 

It turned out on inquiry that they were 
going the same road, and the officer under- 
took to bear them company so far, on the 
following day, and point out the place. Mon- 
sieur was very glad of the prospect of a mili- 
tary escort over the mountains. 

The party set forward after a comfortable 
breakfast, and Monsieur was very bountiful 
to the landlady, both in money and praise, 
for the excellence of her accommodations. 
The sportsman had started at daybreak on 
his favourite pursuit. The two oificers ac- 
companied the carriage on horseback. 

It was past noon when they reached that 
part of the summit of the mountain road 
which overlooked the plains of Bohemia. 
[227 ] 



The road was narrow, and bounded by pre- 
cipitous crags with fragments of stone scat- 
tered at their base. 

"This is the spot," said the old officer. 
"And this is the identical stone, looking 
neither younger nor older than it did when I 
was as young as my fair companions." 

"Oh," said Madame, "I would not sit on 
it for the world." 

"I will with pleasure," said Mademoiselle, 
"but I am afraid I have no illusions worth 
the echo's notice, though I do most firmly 
believe I shall marry the handsomest, noblest, 
most amiable and most constant husband in 
all the world. Bless me, surely I heard a 
titter at least." 

No, it was but fancy. There was not the 
shadow of a sound. 

"Well," said Adeline, "I am clearly not 
worth laughing at. Pray try yourself, sir." 

"It is in vain," said the officer, sitting 
down. "I have no longer any illusions. Did 
you hear?" 

"Nothing." 

"Not even a half stifled laugh?" 

"No." 

"The charm is broken. Will you try, 
Mademoiselle?" 

"I, too, have no illusions," said Elise. 

"Will you, my young friend?" 
[228] 



"My illusions," said the young officer, 
"are of a very commonplace kind, not worth 
the echo's notice." 

"Monsieur," said the officer. 

"I will try my chance," said Monsieur, 
"and to recur to the subject of your three 
illusions, I will say that I think the progress 
of reason and liberty are certain though slow, 
and that there is much more of both now in 
the world than there was in the twelfth 
century." 

A loud laugh ran echoing and re-echoing 
along the rocks. Monsieur jumped up in 
amazement, and Madame fell down in a 
swoon. Suddenly the sportsman made his 
appearance, and sprinkled some cold water 
on her forehead, while Monsieur held a 
smelling bottle to her nose. 

"Ah! Monsieur le chasseur^'' said Mon- 
sieur de Virelai, "I suspect this is a mauvaise 
flaisanterie of yours. You have got here 
before us to laugh at us behind the rocks." 

"Indeed," said the sportsman, "you give 
me credit for magnificent lungs. But I have 
been here before you with a less mischievous 
intent. My purpose was simply to invite you 
to a collation which I have had spread for 
you in a grotto close by." 

This invitation was irresistible to Mon- 
sieur. Leaving the carriage and horses in 
[229] 



charge of their servants, they followed the 
sportsman along a rocky path which after a 
short winding through precipices, opened into 
a little amphitheatre of basaltic columns, 
with a dark brown lake in the center, on the 
shore of which, in a shadowy nook which the 
sun had just quitted — a natural grotto of 
surpassing beauty — was spread a collation 
of great variety and abundance. 

The party felt very grateful for the sports- 
man's attention. The collation had some- 
thing of the effect of the lotus. It made 
them forget their journey, and they sat dis- 
cussing the past, present and future, over 
wine of astonishing flavour. Monsieur was 
very full of the laughing echo, as he called 
it, though he admitted that if nobody had 
laughed to set it going it could not be an echo. 
He suspected the sportsman, but the old 
officer maintained that the sounds were the 
same as he had heard forty years before, 
when the sportsman would not have been 
born. 

Madame said little, but she was clearly 
convinced that the laughter was Numbernip; 
but she seemed to have got rid of her fears, 
whether by the charm of the collation or by 
the exercise of reason we know not; or rather 
we do know it was reason of course, as every- 
thing is in our time and as nothing was in 
[230] 



the time of our forefathers. Perhaps it was 
because her two new military acquaintances 
had seated her between them; but the 
younger officer had contrived to have Ade- 
line on the other side of him. 

The conversation often recurred to the 
echo, and from the echo to Numbernip. "Of 
all the tales that I have heard of the moun- 
tain spirit," said Mademoiselle, "I most de- 
light in his adventure with the Countess 
Cecilia, whom he rescued from a robber, and 
entertained so magnificently in a castle, un- 
der the semblance of Lord Giantdale." 

"It is very singular," said the sportsman, 
"that my worthy grandfather should have 
been taken for Numbernip. I am now Lord 
Giantdale, and practice, I hope, the hos- 
pitality of my ancestors; but I never knew 
that any of us had been suspected of being 
goblins. I have heard him speak of the 
Countess Cecilia, and wonder she did not 
keep an engagement she had made to pay 
him a second visit." 

"She could not find him," said Adeline. 
"Nobody knew anything about him." 

"She must have gone strangely out of her 
way then," said the sportsman. "Ask the 
first man you meet; I will be bound he 
knows me." 

"But," said Adeline, "he introduced her 
[231 ] 



to a large company, the whole of whom she 
met again at Carlsbad, and not one of them 
recollected her." 

"Very likely," said the sportsman. "Your 
dearest friend in one place does not know you 
in another." 

"But there could be no reason for not 
knowing the Countess," said Adeline. 

"I cannot tell," said the sportsman. "I 
know that Giantdale Castle has stood on 
terra firma, ever since I was born." 

"I know one of the Countess's daughters," 
said Madame. "I have heard the story from 
her, though they talked little of it, for fear of 
the beaux e sprits.'''' 

"I like the heaux esprits,^^ said the sports- 
man. "I have had many such among my 

visitors at . But they have laughed me 

out of placing Implicit trust in my own 
senses. I think the Carlsbad company must 
have been in a conspiracy to mystify the 
Countess Cecilia." 

They went on discussing till the sky 
darkened, when this and a rising wind an- 
nounced a coming storm. The surface of 
the solitary pool was crisped over with little 
eddies. 

"We had better," said the sportsman, 
"make an experiment for the evening on the 
hospitality of [blank]. It is not far off, and 
[232] 



you have otherwise before you a long journey 
through the tempest which is coming." 

Monsieur, who, having been once puzzled, 
had grown extremely curious, gladly availed 
himself of an opportunity to pause in a 
locality in which he might investigate the 
mystery of the echo. Madame had got rid 
of her apprehensions, and all the rest of the 
party were very willing to participate in the 
hospitality of [blank]. It was not long before 
the travelling carriage rolled under the arch 
of the castle gates. 



[233 ] 



COTSWOLD CHACE 



COTSWOLD CHACE 

One winter afternoon, under a bright sunny- 
sky, with ice on the water, and snow on the 
ground, a young gentleman alighted at a 
railway station, and asked if a post chaise 
were awaiting him, as a visitor to Cotswold 
Chace. The answer being affirmative, he 
took his seat, and the chaise drove off. He 
passed first through a tract of cultivated 
country; then through a tract of woodland; 
then across a wide space of undulating land; 
then past a tract of woodland clothing a hill- 
side and bordering the road, which rose by a 
continuous ascent to the summit of open un- 
dulating land; then arrived at a lodge with 
a pair of iron gates, through which he entered 
on another woodland tract, which continued 
unbroken till he arrived at his destination. 

The chaise stopped at the door of a large 
ancient mansion, which seemed to stand as 
the representative of three hundred years ago. 
To the right and left of it were several gigantic 
cedars, wide apart In single majesty. Before 
these again were oak and beech, chestnut 

[237] 



and wild cherry, and ash; all Insulated like 
the cedars, showing their old trunks, one be- 
yond the other, till they were masked by 
their numbers; diverging from the house on 
both sides till they met in a deep mass of 
woodland at some distance in front, which 
bounded the prospect. 

Entering a spacious hall, he was ushered 
through a door on the left into a large room, 
of which the sides were composed of alterna- 
tions of tapestried panels and dark oaken 
bookshelves, with a large stained-glass win- 
dow in the middle of each of three sides, the 
middle of the fourth being assigned to the 
fireplace. This was of great width, with 
enormous logs of wood burning on and- 
irons; above it was an old carving of oak, 
representing the arms of the family, with 
figures on each side as large as life; on the 
one a forester, with bow, arrows and bugle, 
and a hound at his feet; on the other a lady, 
in forest apparel, with a falcon on her wrist. 
On each side of the fire was a large old arm 
chair, in one of which was seated a young 
gentleman, the only modern article in the 
apartment, who, on the announcement of his 
visitor, rose to welcome him, which he did 
very cordially. 

Refreshment having been offered to the 
new-comer, and declined on the ground that 
[238] 



he had taken care of himself with a basket 
of sandwiches and Madeira on the railway, 
they took their seats on the opposite chairs. 
*'I rejoice to meet you again, Richard," said 
the visitor. "We have not met since we 
were boys. You have been a fixture, while I 
have been a wanderer; and here you are, sole 
lord and master of an extensive property — 
Cotswold of Cotswold; but I rather wonder 
at the name; for I have always understood 
a wold to be a place bare of trees and this 
place is all trees." 

Richard Cotswold. — "There are places with- 
out trees, which are still called forests, and a 
wold may have been planted, and retained its 
name after the trees grew up. But, in fact, 
there is still a belt of wold all round the Chace, 
and the part may stand for the whole. And, 
though a place of some extent in itself, it oc- 
cupies but a small portion of the Cotswold 
Hills." 

Charles. — "I passed, then, over a part of 
the Wold, a perfectly bare tract; and on the 
other side of it, just as I emerged from the 
woodland, I saw a pair of iron gates, with a 
lodge; almost the only sign of habitation in 
the whole way, excepting a small village, 
and a few scattered cottages. So you have a 
neighbour within carriage distance." 

Richard. — "Yes, but it is a fair spinster, 
[239] 



who has come at an early age into possession 
of a large property, which has gone through 
many revolutions. There is a great deal of 
woodland, still in a primitive state, but the 
house and all about it are things of yesterday." 
Charles. — "You call her a fair spinster, 
and you say she is young. Is she handsome?" 
Richard. — "Very handsome." 
Charles. — "Can you describe her?" 
Richard. — "I think I can, for there is 
nothing complicated about her. The ele- 
ments of the description are few and simple. 
She dresses almost always in very fine cloth, 
usually blue; with a black hat and feather, 
and very neat boots, laced over a small and 
very pretty foot. She wears no crinoline, 
and, if I might venture to divine, no stays. 
In short, she is like a Greek statue, only in 
thicker, but still fine and graceful, drapery, 
and all her movements are graceful. Her 
dress closes round her neck, and descends to 
her ankles. Her features are as regular as 
sculpture could make them. Her complexion 
is, I imagine, naturally fair, but slightly em- 
browned by air and exercise; and there is 
over it a pure roseate glow of health, that 
makes her literally radiant. Her hair is very 
fine, and slightly darker than her eyes, which 
are hazel, and there Is a brilliancy of expres- 
sion about them that seems to emanate from 
[240] 



a very high order of mind. Her voice in 
speaking is at once soft and full, sweet and 
distinct; the natural articulation of graceful 
and unruffled thoughts. I imagine that she 
sings, and that her singing voice is no less 
charming, but I have never heard her." 

Charles. — "No! That is strange." 

Richard. — "It is so, however. I some- 
times meet her, and exchange salutations; 
but I have never been in her house." 

Charles. — "That is still more strange. 
Have you never presented yourself at her 
doors?" 

Richard. — "No, for I have the most dis- 
tinct assurance that I should not be ad- 
mitted. No man is; nor woman either, her 
own servants excepted, so far as I can learn. 
She neither visits nor receives visitors. And 
she has neither man nor boy as indoor ser- 
vants, though she has a sufficient establish- 
ment of them for outdoor work." 

Charles. — "Well, but have you never taken 
any step towards intimacy? Being, as no 
doubt you are, in love — " 

Richard. — "That is just what I am not." 

Charles. — "Indeed! You described her as 
I should have thought none but a lover could 
do. And so, you are contented with exchang- 
ing salutations. How did you get so far as 
that?" 

[241] 



Richard. — "Our acquaintance, such as it 
is, began with a letter from her, which I will 
show you. Here it is." 

Charles. — "Beautiful handwriting." 
Richard. — " Like herself. She is all beauty." 
Charles. — "And you are not in love with 
her?" 

Richard. — "No. Read the letter." 
Charles (reading). — "' Sir, your people and 
mine are frequently in dispute about our re- 
spective manorial rights on the wold. I pro- 
pose that we should meet on the spot, with 
two or three of the oldest tenants on each 
side, and draw a line of demarcation. I am 
disposed to make all reasonable concessions. 
Your obedient Servant, Cecilia Dorimer.^ 
Short, and conciliatory. Well?" 

Richard. — "I answered, that I should be 
happy to meet her. We met accordingly. I 
offered her the boundary claimed by her own 
people. She offered me that claimed by mine. 
Neither of us would accept the concession, 
and we ended by drawing a middle line." 

Charles. — "Now, I am as sure as I can 
be of anything, that she cared nothing about 
the boundary, and would have ordered her 
people not to dispute it, if she had not found 
it a good pretext to make your acquaintance. 
Had your people and hers been fighting like 
the servants of Capulet and Montague?" 
[242] 



Richard. — "The first I heard of the dis- 
pute was from her letter. And I should have 
conceded the point at once, if I had not 
wished to meet her." 

Charles. — "A clear case of pretext, made 
by her, and accepted by you." 

Richard. — "Possibly. I am delighted to 
have seen her. *A thing of beauty is a joy 
forever.'" 

Charles. — "When you exchange saluta- 
tions, how does she look ? Serious or smiling ? " 

Richard. — "Neither, exactly. Something 
like a smile. The dawn before the sun, such 
as might precede, though it does not: — 

' II lampeggiarde 1' angelico riso 
Che sembra aprire in terra un paradise' " 

Charles. — "You apply to her what Pe- 
trarch says of Laura, and you are not in love 
with her.?" 

Richard. — "I am not in love with her." 
Charles. — "This is a riddle." 
Richard. — "No. It is merely a fact." 
In due time they dined in a corresponding 
apartment on the opposite side of the hall, 
and, over Madeira and claret, talked of their 
earlier days, with occasional recurrence to 
the present, and especially to the lady on the 
other side of the wold. Charles renewed the 
subject from time to time, and found that, as 
[243 ] 



the wine sunk in the bottles, his host grew 
more eloquent and expansive in praise of 
his beautiful neighbor; still persisting most 
emphatically that he was not in love with 
her. 

There was on each side of the hall a large 
oaken staircase. They ascended together the 
one nearest to the dining room, and, as they 
were parting for the night, at the door of 
Charles's apartment the visitor suddenly 
said to his host: — "Though you are not in 
love with the young lady, I am, with your 
description of her. Have you any objection 
to my trying my fortune in that quarter?" 
"A decided objection," answered Richard, 
and walked off hastily. "A curious speci- 
men," said Charles to himself, laughing as 
he closed his chamber door, "of a man who 
is not in love." 

Richard and Charles were first cousins by 
the mothers' side. They had often met in 
their early days, but Richard had been 
brought up in seclusion and Charles at a 
public school and university. They had met 
at the house of Charles's parents, but through 
a feud between the two brothers-in-law, 
Charles had never been at Cotswold. Richard 
had been little less than a fixture on his 
paternal estate; Charles had wandered over 
half the world. Returning after a long ab- 

[244] 



sence, his first thought was to propose a 
visit to his cousin, and the proposal having 
been cordially accepted, he made his ap- 
pearance at the Chace. 

On the day after his arrival, Richard 
showed him over his house and partly over 
his grounds. There were on the upper floor, — 
for there was only one, — many large and 
lofty chambers on each side of two wide 
corridors, with doors at each end, leading to 
the apartments of the male servants on one 
side and to those of the female servants on 
the other. At the end of the hall opposite 
the main entrance were large folding doors; 
above them was an organ-loft, with a large 
organ. The folding doors led to a suite of 
three rooms communicating by double doors 
at the sides. Everything wore the same ap- 
pearance of antiquity, though there was not 
an absolute rejection of all modern appliances 
to domestic comfort; the number of these 
which were worth adopting having been, 
nevertheless, in the opinion of the proprietors 
past and present, exceedingly few. 

Of the rest of the building it will be suffi- 
cient to say that the kitchen would have 
done honour to the Abbot of Glastonbury. 

Local attachment had always been very 
strong in the Cotswold family, and from 
father to son, during three centuries, every 

[245] 



successive proprietor had carefully abstained 
from altering that which his predecessor had 
left. The few novelties in the house were 
chiefly in books and music. 

The three rooms above mentioned were ap- 
propriated in the morning, one to ladies, one 
to gentlemen, and the middle room to both. 
In the evening the three were common to all. 
But the present young proprietor had not 
as yet had any lady visitors. He had medi- 
tated on the means of inviting them through 
some matronly friend; but he had not fixed 
on one to his mind, nor prearranged in his 
thoughts whom he should like to invite, 
scarcely venturing to acknowledge to himself 
that he thought only of one. 

"I have been thinking," said Charles in 
the evening after dinner, "of what you have 
told me of the Lady of Beechwoods, and I can- 
not reconcile the admiration you express of 
her with the total absence of love." 

Richard. — "There is a mystery about her, 
and I hate mystery." 

Charles. — "How do you know there is a 
mystery?" 

Richard. — "How can it be otherwise.'* A 
young woman living in absolute solitude, 
never visiting, never receiving a visit from 
one of her own sex. It is not natural; it is 
not rational. There must be a mystery. 

[246] 



Affable to all who speak to her out of doors, 
kind to her dependents, generous to her 
tenants, bountiful to the poor; yet to all 
appearance without a friend in the world. 
There must be a mystery." 

Charles. — "I will soon ascertain if there is 
one, and if there is, I will be bound to solve it." 

Richard. — "No, Charles, you must not 
interfere between her and me." 

Charles. — "How interfere? You are not 
in love, and your intercourse consists in ex- 
changing 'How d' ye do' on the wold. I shall 
not interrupt your 'How d' ye dos.'" 

Richard. — "Charles, Charles, do not tor- 
ment me. The world is wide enough, and 
there are plenty of women in it besides Miss 
Dorimer. I like to contemplate her as she 
is; the one rose of my wilderness; the one 
star of my twilight; the one enigma of my 
study; the — " 

Charles. — "The one divinity of your tem- 
ple, the one goddess of your idolatry. May I 
not worship at the same shrine with the same 
unpresuming and unpretending adoration .»* 
May I not even say: — 'Great is Diana of the 
Ephesians'?" 

Richard. — "It is not an unpresuming wor- 
ship to seek to penetrate the heart of her 
mystery. I cannot think of your doing what 
I have not myself dared to attempt." 
[247] 



Charles. — "Well, Richard, if you are not 
in love, you have a sort of feeling in its place 
which it would puzzle you to analyse. Set 
your heart at rest for me: I will not inter- 
fere. But I hope if we meet her on the wold, 
you will introduce me, and allow me to raise 
my hat." 

Richard. — "I am not in love, Charles; 
but I have no wish to analyse my feelings. I 
dare say I am very absurd, but I am satisfied 
with your assurance that you will respect my 
absurdity." 

Charles. — "I will not only promise it, but 
swear it." 

He filled a bumper of claret, and making 
a libation of a few drops on the floor said, 
"To Diana!" Then lifting up the glass he 
exclaimed : " By Bacchus ! " And having drunk 
the wine with much apparent solemnity, he 
turned down his empty glass and replaced it 
on the table in its proper position. 

The Beomonds were invited and accepted 
the invitation. The lady was the youngest 
sister of Richard's father. The register of 
her birth made her forty; her looks showed 
her scarcely more than thirty. She had been 
married at an early age. Her husband was 
only two years her senior. He had been 
passionately in love with her, and was still a 
conspicuous example of a man in love with 
[ 248 ] 



his wife. The lady was unimpassioned but 
affectionate, even-tempered, uniformly cheer- 
ful, the same to-day as yesterday. Her hus- 
band would have wished her to be as much 
in love with him as he was with her; he 
wanted something more than affection; there 
was no place in her heart for more; she gave 
it frankly and truly, but the hope of more 
ardent love supplied him with a perpetual 
pursuit. His married life was one long court- 
ship, and his home a happy one. 

The lady had retained little taste for the 
antiquities among which she had been brought 
up; and would have preferred society as it 
is to society as it was, if the world as it is 
could have given her the choice of both. 
Her husband and herself were alike fond of 
company, joining in all the gaieties of the 
London season; roaming about the Conti- 
nent in the autumn; passing the winter in 
the country, visiting other country houses or 
receiving visits at their own. They had one 
daughter, whom they had educated at home, 
who accompanied them everywhere, and 
whom they brought with them on this oc- 
casion; a pretty, merry, tripping, skipping, 
light-hearted damsel, whose voice was often 
heard on the stairs or in the hall, announcing 
her approach by scraps of cheerful melody. 

Mrs. Beomond gladly undertook the task 
[249] 



of filling the house with company, and suc- 
ceeded in doing so with an ample party; 
leaving one suite of rooms for the Lady of 
Beechwoods; which were to remain unoc- 
cupied if not graced by the presence of Miss 
Dorimer. Cotswold of Cotswold scarcely 
knew himself and his house, under this irrup- 
tion of the modern world. 

Now the great difficulty remained, or 
rather the series of difficulties; to obtain 
access to Miss Dorimer; to invite her to 
the Chace; to induce her to accept the in- 
vitation. Richard could not suggest an idea 
on the subject; Charles was not to interfere. 
It devolved on Mrs. Beomond not only to 
conduct the intricate and delicate business, 
but to devise the means of doing so with any 
prospect of success. 

To attempt introducing herself by calling 
at the young lady's house she was aware 
would be hopeless. She would not be told 
that Miss Dorimer was not at home; the 
lady's maid would receive her very cour- 
teously, and inform her with all imaginable 
civility that Miss Dorimer did not receive 
visitors. To write seemed scarcely more 
promising, but she could think of no third 
course. 



[250] 



31^77-11. 



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